Deep Clean IFC, RVT, NWD Model
Find and remove hidden leftovers that bloat your file — unused geometry, orphaned relationships, and data nothing else references.
Besides IFC, this tool takes Revit (.rvt) and Navisworks (.nwd) files, with no Revit or Navisworks licence. Drop one in and it is converted to IFC first, then the tool runs on that IFC; your original file is not changed.
Find and remove everything an IFC model no longer references. Upload the file and get back one with the orphaned geometry, dead relationships and unreachable entities gone — and nothing that anything still points at touched.
IFC files accumulate. Every edit, export, merge and round trip through a translator can leave entities behind that nothing references any more: geometry whose element was deleted, relationships pointing at things that no longer exist, property sets attached to nobody. None of it renders, none of it appears in a schedule, and all of it is parsed every time anyone opens the file. On a model with a long editing history it can be a substantial share of the bytes.
When to reach for it: When you've tried the other cleanup tools and your file still feels too big. Deep Clean walks the whole model starting from the project root and removes anything that isn't actually referenced by the building itself — unused shapes, orphaned relationships, and data that nothing else uses.
What you get: The same model with every unreachable entity removed. Geometry, spatial structure, and any data referenced by your elements are preserved exactly.
Example: You ran Optimize and Remove but the file is still 80 MB. Deep Clean finds everything the targeted tools missed.
Mark and sweep from the project root
The rule is reachability, not a list of suspicious patterns. Starting from every IfcProject in the file, the purge walks outward through explicit references and through the inverse relationships IFC uses to glue the tree together — aggregation, containment, property sets, materials, types — marking everything it reaches and iterating until the reachable set stops growing. Anything still unmarked is, by definition, not part of the model.
That's a much safer basis than heuristics. It doesn't need to recognise what an entity is or guess whether it's still wanted; if a path exists from the project to it, it stays.
Rebuilt, not deleted one entity at a time
The implementation detail here is worth knowing, because it is the difference between a tool you can use and one you can't. Deleting entities individually is the obvious approach and it does not scale: xbim's delete walks every live instance to null out references to the departing one, so each delete is linear in model size and the whole sweep is quadratic. On a 400,000-entity Tekla model that was measured in HOURS.
So the purge doesn't delete. It computes the reachable set, inverts it, and copies only the reachable entities into a fresh, tightly-packed store in a single forward pass — the unreachable ones are never instantiated at all. The same model that took hours completes in a normal run, and the output is compacted as a side effect of being rebuilt.
Where it fits with the other cleanup tools
Reduce IFC File Size already runs this as the final step of its medium and aggressive presets. This page exposes it on its own for the case where you want to know what the purge alone accounts for — troubleshooting a file that's inexplicably large, or confirming that a merge or a translator round trip left debris behind.
It removes nothing that the model still uses, so it's the safest of the size tools and a reasonable thing to run on any file with editing history. For bigger reductions you have to remove things the model does use: Delete IFC Elements for whole classes, Bounding Box Simplification for heavy detail, Strip IFC Materials for material definitions.
Using it on Revit and Navisworks files
When you open a .rvt or a .nwd file here, BIMCamel converts it to IFC on the server and brings you back to this tool with the converted model loaded. Element ids, levels and properties come across under their Revit and Navisworks names, so pick properties as they appear in your model. Your .rvt or .nwd itself is never edited: a tool that changes the model gives you an IFC back.
Revit files can be up to 25 MB without an account, 100 MB with a free one and 200 MB on a paid plan. Navisworks files can be up to 25 MB without an account, 100 MB with a free one and 200 MB on a paid plan, and they open in the browser viewer at the same sizes. Revit projects saved in Revit 2021 to 2027 are supported.
How to deep clean an IFC model
- Upload your model (IFC, RVT or NWD)
- Click Run — no configuration needed
- Download the leaner file
Under the hood
BIMCamel parses IFC files in the browser using the open-source web-ifc engine and renders models with @thatopen/components + three.js. Heavy operations (clean / optimise / validate / convert) run on disposable server-side workers using the same web-ifc stack plus our own .NET pipeline; results stream back to your browser as soon as they're ready. Uploads sit on our servers only as long as your tier's retention window allows and are never used to train AI.
Frequently asked questions
What does deep cleaning remove?
Everything unreachable from the project root — orphaned geometry, dead relationships, property sets attached to nothing, entities left behind by earlier edits. If something in the model still references it, it stays.
Is it safe to run on any model?
Yes. It works by reachability rather than by pattern-matching, so it can only remove entities that nothing points at. It's the safest of the size-reduction tools and reasonable to run on any file with editing history.
Why is my IFC full of unreferenced data?
Normal accumulation. Edits, exports, merges and translator round trips all leave entities behind whose owner has gone. None of it renders or appears in a schedule, so nothing surfaces it — but every parse of the file still reads it.
Does Reduce IFC File Size already do this?
Yes, as the last step of its medium and aggressive presets. This page runs the purge on its own so you can see what it alone accounts for — useful when troubleshooting a file that's larger than it should be, or checking whether a merge left debris.
Will it take a long time on a big model?
No. Rather than deleting entities one by one — which is quadratic in model size and was measured in hours on a 400,000-entity model — it copies only the reachable entities into a fresh store in a single pass, so the unreachable ones are never instantiated. The output is compacted as a side effect.
Which IFC versions are supported?
IFC2x3 and IFC4 — the two schema versions exported by essentially every AEC authoring application. IFC4x3, the infrastructure schema, works too: it opens in the viewer, and validation, health reports, property-set editing and georeferencing all run on it. Tools that need geometry processing, such as clash detection and 3D export, aren't verified on IFC4x3 yet.
What's the maximum IFC file size?
Up to 25 MB as a guest, 100 MB with a free account, 500 MB on Pro, and 1 GB on Team. The caps are on upload size only — every tool itself is available on every tier.
What happens to my file after processing?
Your file is uploaded over HTTPS and processed on our servers. Guest uploads are stream-only — the working files are deleted as soon as your download finishes. Free accounts keep results for 7 days; Pro and Team keep saved models until you delete them. Files are never shared with third parties or used to train AI.
Is Deep Clean IFC Model free?
Yes. Deep Clean IFC Model is free to use — guests get 3 runs a day with 25 MB uploads, and a free account raises that to 10 runs a day with 100 MB uploads. No trial clock, no watermarks.
Can I use a Revit or Navisworks file with Deep Clean IFC, RVT, NWD Model?
Yes. Open a .rvt or .nwd file and it is converted to IFC first; the tool then runs on that IFC and your original file is not changed.