FZKViewer — The Complete Guide: An IFC and CityGML Viewer Between BIM and GIS
FZKViewer was developed at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) to display standardised semantic models from the BIM and GIS worlds. It is free, including for commercial use, and runs on Windows.
FZKViewer
Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT)
An academic viewer for IFC and CityGML — the bridge between BIM and city models.
Get it from the vendorWhat you get
- IFC — in a range of versions, with the full hierarchy tree.
- CityGML — three-dimensional city models.
- gbXML and LandXML — energy models, topography and infrastructure.
- Properties — all the semantic data of every object.
- Basic checking — spotting problems in a file that will not load for someone else.
What to know
According to the institute’s site, the tool is no longer actively developed — the latest release exists and works, but do not expect updates or support for new IFC versions. It is still useful for questions between BIM and GIS: a building in its urban context, or diagnosing a problematic file.
Related tools
For working with city models and spatial data — QGIS. For a maintained IFC viewer — Open IFC Viewer or BIMvision.
QGIS
QGIS.org
Open-source GIS for spatial analysis, layer work and map production.
Get it from the vendorOpen IFC Viewer
Open Design Alliance (ODA)
A free, light IFC viewer, available for Linux and macOS too.
Get it from the vendor
BIMvision
Datacomp
A free IFC viewer — open a BIM model, measure, section and take off quantities, without a licence.
Get it from the vendor
Bonsai (BlenderBIM)
IfcOpenShell
Native IFC editing inside Blender — open-source BIM.
Get it from the vendorThe bottom line
FZKViewer is a unique tool for the open BIM and GIS formats together — recommended for checking and diagnosis, less so as an everyday viewer.