BrewBIM

BrewBim opens IFC / BIM models on your Mac: see the building in 3D, cut it open, walk its structure, and read what every element actually says. No CAD suite, no cloud upload, no account.

BIM files arrive as .ifc and most people can't open them. The viewers that exist are either a multi-gigabyte CAD suite or a web app that wants your whole building uploaded first. BrewBim is a 5MB Mac app that opens the file, draws it, and lets you interrogate it - and the model never leaves your machine.

Highlights

1. Opens .ifc, and it just works - IFC2X3 and IFC4, from Revit, ArchiCAD or anything else. Parsed and drawn on your Mac; nothing is uploaded, no conversion step, no server.
2. Handles a real building - a 47MB castle, a 10,000-element tower: the whole model is drawn in a single pass, so it stays smooth while you orbit it.
3. Look inside a floor - one key isolates the storey, cuts the ceiling off and looks down into it. Walk up and down the building with the arrow keys, staying inside it.
4. Section it open - cut a floor, cut a wall, or cut straight through a face you clicked. The cut reads as solid material, not as a hollow shell.
5. Every property set, in the right units - Pset_*, quantities, areas and volumes - the metadata people open an IFC to read. Lengths come back as 3.65 m or 12 in, read from the file's own unit declaration.
6. Find anything - browse by where it is (Site → Building → Storey), or by what it is (every door, every window, in one row). Search matches names and IFC types.
7. Hide, isolate, x-ray - take a floor out of the way, keep only what you're looking at, or ghost the shell to see the column buried inside it.
8. Measure - two clicks, snapped to real corners, answered in the model's own units. Not "about a metre".
9. Plan view - orthographic, from straight above: the drawing you already know how to read.
10. Several models at once - open them in tabs and switch instantly. Drag an .ifc onto the window, or pick one from Recent.

How it works

Open a model - the dialog, a drag onto the window, or Recent. BrewBim parses it and drops you into a 3D stage: the spatial tree on the left, the model in the middle, the selected element's properties on the right. Click a thing to find out what it is; click its name in the tree to be taken to it.

From there it's a building, not a picture. I looks inside the floor you're on. S cuts the model open. X x-rays it. M measures. 2 flattens it into a plan. Every shortcut is one right-click away, and the whole list is one key press away.

Nothing is stored: BrewBim reads the file you picked and holds the model in memory. Close the app and there is no database, no cache, no copy of your building anywhere.

Perfect for

1. Anyone handed an .ifc - a client, a contractor, a QS - who needs to look at the model without buying a CAD seat.
2. Architects and engineers - a fast second opinion on an exported model, without launching the authoring tool.
3. Checking an export - did the geometry, the storey structure, the property sets and the units all survive the IFC round-trip? Open it and see.
4. Site and coordination - cut a section, measure a clearance, isolate a floor, and read the fire rating off the wall - without the model leaving your laptop.
5. Confidential projects - the model stays on your machine, which no browser-based viewer can promise.