Fixing broken IFC exports
The export problems that get models rejected — changing or duplicate GUIDs, missing properties, wrong coordinates, oversized files — traced to their cause in Revit and other tools.
All 9 guides on this topic
You import the IFC and the building is two kilometres away — or sitting at the origin when it should be georeferenced to a national grid. Revit's three coordinate systems and IFC's georeferencing entities don't line up by default. Here's how to get the model where it belongs.
You re-export the same model, send it to your coordinator, and every BCF comment, clash issue, and FM tag is suddenly pointing at the wrong element — or nothing at all. The cause: your IFC GlobalIds were regenerated. Here's why it happens and how to lock them down.
You exported the model, opened the IFC, and half your parameters are gone — or worse, they exported fine for you but vanished when a colleague ran the same export. Here's the checklist that explains why IFC properties go missing from Revit and how to get every one of them across.
A 600 MB federated IFC, 1.7 GB of RAM, 3 frames per second, then the tab dies. Large IFC files break most web viewers for concrete technical reasons. Here's what's actually happening — and how to open a model that size without a server or a high-end workstation.
The geometry exported fine last week. This week elements are on the wrong floor, walls are missing, and the whole model is sitting in the wrong place. Revit IFC exports break for a handful of predictable reasons — here's how to identify which one bit you, and fix it.
You link an Archicad IFC into Revit and find duplicate geometry floating hundreds of feet in the air — even though the same file looks perfect in the cloud viewer. Cross-tool IFC exchange has failure modes that only show up between vendors. Here's what breaks and how to work around it.
A 900 MB IFC won't email, takes forever to open, and crashes the coordinator's viewer. You can usually cut it by 70–90% — but only some methods are safe. Here's how to shrink an IFC without destroying the data people need downstream.
Three weeks into a BCF coordination issue, you realise the comments reference elements that have vanished from the model. The model looks fine. The error: two elements sharing the same GlobalId — and every tool downstream has been silently confused since day one.
Revit's default IFC export settings produce avoidable validation warnings by the dozen. Here are the exact settings that eliminate the most common failures before the file reaches the CDE.
Tools for this topic
- IFC Validator — 44 quality rules and a Health Score, in your browser — the file is never uploaded.
- Duplicate GUID fixer — Find and repair duplicate GlobalIds that break BCF and model comparison.
- Fix guides — One page per validation rule: what it means, why it fails, how to fix it in your authoring tool.