ifc-lite-geometry 1.1.4

Overview

IFC-Lite is a next-generation IFC (Industry Foundation Classes) platform built with Rust + WebAssembly for parsing, geometry processing, and WebGPU for 3D visualization. It's designed to be a 95x smaller and significantly faster alternative to existing web-based IFC solutions.

Features

Quick Start

Option 1: Create a New Project (Recommended)

Get started instantly without cloning the repo:

npx create-ifc-lite my-ifc-app
cd my-ifc-app
npm install && npm run parse

Or create a React viewer:

npx create-ifc-lite my-viewer --template react
cd my-viewer
npm install && npm run dev

Option 2: Install Packages Directly

Add IFC-Lite to your existing project:

npm install @ifc-lite/parser

import { IfcParser } from '@ifc-lite/parser';

const parser = new IfcParser();
const result = parser.parse(ifcBuffer);

console.log(`Found ${result.entities.length} entities`);

For full 3D rendering, add geometry and renderer packages:

npm install @ifc-lite/parser @ifc-lite/geometry @ifc-lite/renderer

Option 3: Rust/Cargo

For Rust projects:

cargo add ifc-lite-core

use ifc_lite_core::parse_ifc;

let result = parse_ifc(&ifc_bytes)?;
println!("Parsed {} entities", result.entities.len());

Option 4: Clone the Repo (Contributors)

For contributing or running the full demo app:

git clone https://github.com/louistrue/ifc-lite.git
cd ifc-lite
pnpm install && pnpm dev

Open http://localhost:5173 and load an IFC file.

Note: Requires Node.js 18+ and pnpm 8+. No Rust toolchain needed - WASM is pre-built.

Basic Usage

import { IfcParser } from '@ifc-lite/parser';
import { Renderer } from '@ifc-lite/renderer';

// Parse IFC file
const parser = new IfcParser();
const result = parser.parse(ifcArrayBuffer);

// Access entities
const walls = result.entities.filter(e => e.type === 'IFCWALL');
console.log(`Found ${walls.length} walls`);

// Render geometry (requires @ifc-lite/renderer)
const renderer = new Renderer(canvas);
await renderer.loadGeometry(result.geometry);
renderer.render();

Documentation

Architecture

IFC files flow through three layers:

Parser (Rust/WASM) — Zero-copy STEP tokenizer, entity scanner, and geometry processor using nom, earcutr, and nalgebra.

Data (TypeScript) — Columnar TypedArrays for properties, CSR graph for relationships, GPU-ready geometry buffers.

Output — WebGPU renderer, Parquet analytics, glTF/JSON-LD/CSV export.

Project Structure

ifc-lite/
├── rust/                      # Rust/WASM backend
│   ├── core/                  # IFC/STEP parsing (~2,000 LOC)
│   ├── geometry/              # Geometry processing (~2,500 LOC)
│   └── wasm-bindings/         # JavaScript API (~800 LOC)
│
├── packages/                  # TypeScript packages
│   ├── parser/                # High-level IFC parser
│   ├── geometry/              # Geometry bridge (WASM)
│   ├── renderer/              # WebGPU rendering
│   ├── cache/                 # Binary cache format
│   ├── query/                 # Query system
│   ├── data/                  # Columnar data structures
│   ├── spatial/               # Spatial indexing
│   ├── export/                # Export formats
│   └── codegen/               # Schema generator
│
├── apps/
│   └── viewer/                # React web application
│
├── docs/                      # Documentation (MkDocs)
└── plan/                      # Technical specifications

Performance

Bundle Size Comparison

Parse Performance

Geometry Processing

• 1.9x faster mesh extraction than traditional solutions
• Streaming pipeline with batched processing (100 meshes/batch)
• First triangles visible in 300-500ms

Browser Requirements

Development (Contributors)

For contributing to IFC-Lite itself:

git clone https://github.com/louistrue/ifc-lite.git
cd ifc-lite
pnpm install

pnpm dev          # Start viewer in dev mode
pnpm build        # Build all packages
pnpm test         # Run tests

# Rust/WASM development (optional - WASM is pre-built)
cd rust && cargo build --release --target wasm32-unknown-unknown
bash build-wasm.sh  # Rebuild WASM after Rust changes

Packages

Rust Crates

Contributing

We welcome contributions! Please see our Contributing Guide for details.

# Fork and clone
git clone https://github.com/YOUR_USERNAME/ifc-lite.git

# Create a branch
git checkout -b feature/my-feature

# Make changes and test
pnpm test

# Submit a pull request

License

This project is licensed under the Mozilla Public License 2.0.

Acknowledgments

• Built with nom for parsing
• earcutr for polygon triangulation
• nalgebra for linear algebra
• wasm-bindgen for Rust/JS interop