IFC Tip Series: Part 4

This is sadly the last tip in our IFC series, and focuses on minimising your file size.

We recommend two approaches to reducing the size of your IFC files:

1. Use ‘Views’ to limit what you export. This will keep the IFC file size down (and therefore speed up your export)
2. Use Solibri IFC Optimizer to reduce the size of your IFC file even further. The IFC Optimizer can reduce an IFC file to almost 1/10 of its original size, and is a free download from www.solibri.co.nz

We ran some inhouse file size tests using the Solibri IFC Optimiser, and here are our results:

• A 55mb IFC will be optimized to a 45 mb file, then zipped down to 8.5mb.
• A 560mb file will be optimized to a 500mb file, then zipped down to 95mb.

Also remember that most Authoring software can import and export ifczip files natively.