python

webifc (native Python bindings)

Cython bindings over the web-ifc C++ core — no WASM, no Node, no 2GiB/4GiB limits. Files stream from disk with bounded memory (chunk eviction), geometry comes out as double-precision numpy arrays, and IfcSpace/IfcOpeningElement are first-class citizens.

import webifc

with webifc.open("model.ifc") as model:
    print(model.schema)
    for mesh, geometries in model.iter_meshes():
        for placed in mesh.geometries:
            geom = geometries[placed.geometry_express_id]
            # world = (placed.transformation @ [x, y, z, 1])[:3]

Build

cd python
uv venv && uv pip install -e . --no-build-isolation  # needs cython, scikit-build-core, numpy
# or: pip install .

First configure needs network access (CMake FetchContent pulls the pinned header-only deps of the core).

API shape

get_line returns the same {"ID", "type", "arguments"} structure as the web-ifc JS API, with {"type": token, "value": ...} wrappers, so pipelines can migrate from the Node/WASM stack with minimal changes. Divergences: REAL values are Python floats (not strings), and geometry iteration never excludes types — pass exclude_types=("IFCSPACE", "IFCOPENINGELEMENT", "IFCOPENINGSTANDARDCASE") to reproduce upstream viewer behaviour.