Improve native IFC export in Inventor to preserve individual solid bodies (parity with Revit IFC export)

[jbauerNuP]

Current behavior

A direct IFC export from an Inventor assembly produces only a single merged solid body — even when using the BIM Content / Simplify workflow with the option "Keep each solid body as a solid body". The original assembly structure is lost.

As a workaround, users can export to RVT, open the file in Revit, and export to IFC from there. This correctly preserves all individual solid bodies as defined in Inventor.

Problem

Getting a structurally usable IFC file currently requires a detour through Revit. This means a Revit license is needed — without it, no usable IFC export is possible from Inventor — and a manual two-step process (Inventor → RVT → Revit → IFC) for something that should be possible directly. This affects typical handover scenarios of mechanical designs (machine frames, conveyors, industrial equipment) to architects or BIM coordinators, where components are needed as separate IFC entities for clash detection and Open-BIM exchange — not as a single merged solid.

Proposed improvement

Enhance the native IFC export in Inventor so it produces the same structural result as the Revit-based detour: each component / solid body as its own IFC entity, with the assembly hierarchy preserved where possible.

The functionality already exists in the Autodesk ecosystem (Revit produces the desired result from the same source data) — the goal is to make it available natively in Inventor, without requiring a second product.

There is also a current case file with Autodesk Support for this issue, which can be found at the following CaseNo: 25839086

[SharkDesign]

Have you tried this in 2026?
Export to RVT through simplify, but whilst in simplify select RVT 2026 and check the box for 'IFC'

You can throw away the RVT and keep the IFC it produces. You also get more properties

[Uwe_Lindner]

@SharkDesign , thank you at your input. 

It's correct, that you can export at clicks in Dialog a IFC file with separate volumes.

It's all the more puzzling, then, that the BIM Export => Export Building Components route yields a different result.

We request that this be standardized.

Correct result - every Part has one Volume

Wrong result - only one Volume

[SharkDesign]

They are too completely different export commands which is why you see the difference. 

Export building component is using Autodesk translation framework which does a direct translation and therefore only has minimal properties. 

Export through Simplify is using Revit to create an IFC for you which already has the property conversion built in. 

In fact you're really lucky to have the second version, a developer did that in his lunchbreak at the last minute before his team got moved to a different project, it wasn't actually scheduled for a 2026 release.