Built for the AEC industry

Walk your client through the building before it exists.

Open an IFC, a steel model or a site scan on any phone. Measure it, mark it up, and stand it on the real site at full size. Send a link — they open it in their browser, no app and no account.

Your file converts on your own computer — it is never uploaded

From R1,200 for one project — most practices put it on the final account as a disbursement, so it costs the practice nothing. See pricing

On a laptop? Scan to try it on your phone. AR needs a phone — this opens the app there. No app to install, no account.
arfield.app — Schependomlaan.ifc (47 MB, 4 storeys)
ARfield on a laptop showing a real four-storey apartment building converted from a 47 MB architect-issued IFC, with Measure, Note, Identify, Layers and Snapshot in the tool bar.
IFC 2x3 & 4· STEP ISO 10303· IGES · BREP· Point clouds· Revit · Archicad · Tekla · SolidWorks

Real buildings, not samples

Every number below is an architect-issued file run through the live pipeline that converts your model — not a demo house.

14 MB→1.94 MB
13× smaller

Office building, IFC

57 MB→6.79 MB
16× smaller

School, IFC

73 MB→14.6 MB
9× smaller

Architectural model

The part a drawing cannot do

A plan asks the client to picture it. This puts the building on the ground in front of them at full size, through the phone already in their hand — on the stand, at the council meeting, or standing in the middle of the site. A clash seen on site costs a conversation. The same clash found after handover costs a variation order.

Illustration: a phone held up on a construction site, its screen showing a three-storey office building standing at full scale on the ground where it will be built. On-site film coming
Artist's impression, not a screen recording — the on-site footage is still being filmed. What it depicts is live in the product today: open the demo on your phone and stand a building on the ground yourself.

Catch it on screen, not after it's built

Most viewers stop at the screen. ARfield puts the building in front of you at full size — on the stand, in the boardroom, or on the councillor's phone — so the questions get asked while they're still cheap to answer.

Verify dimensions on site

Tap two points, get the real dimension in metres or millimetres. Check what was built against what was drawn — one-handed, on a phone, standing in it.

Tap to identify

Touch a wall and see what it is — its type, and whatever else your model records: family, level, tag. Read straight out of the IFC, not guessed.

Stand it on the site

Place the model at true scale through the phone camera and walk around it. Android and iPhone, from the browser.

Face it the way the drawing does

Turn the model to true north — read straight from the IFC's own survey data when the file carries it, or set on site by pointing your phone. The site report names the coordinate system it came from, so it can be checked against a survey.

Flag a snag on the element itself

Drop a note on the actual wall or beam, not on a screenshot. It stays pinned there as you move around, so nobody argues about which one you meant.

Compare floors and disciplines

Fade the building to see structure behind finishes, hide a storey to look at the one below, or cut the top off entirely — the way you'd catch a clash before it's built.

Send the evidence

Capture the view with your measurements and notes on it, then share to WhatsApp or email in two taps.

Measure it, on the model itself

Tap two points and get a real dimension — read off the geometry your engineer modelled, not estimated off a picture. Fade the finishes to see the structure, hide a storey to look at the floor below, or isolate just the columns. The floors and element types come from the file, so the list matches what was actually drawn.

A 9.36 m dimension measured directly on the apartment building in ARfield, read off the model's own geometry.

Works with what you already export

No new modelling software, no plugin, no change to how you work.

Architects

IFC — exported natively by Revit, Archicad and Vectorworks. Take the client through the scheme on their own phone, or stand it on the site.

Structural engineers

IFC + STEP/IGES — open the architect's model and the fabricator's steel in the same tool. Identify a member, check a dimension, pin a query.

Civil engineers

Place proposed works on the actual site at true scale, for community meetings and council presentations where a drawing wouldn't land.

Mechanical & electrical

IFC from Revit MEP — ducting, pipework and containment open the same way. Tap a run to read its type and level, and check a clash against the structure on site rather than back at the office.

At handover

Give the client a link to walk through the building they've just paid for — levels and element data included. One line on the final account, recovered as a disbursement.

Honestly, what makes it different

There are two kinds of tool already doing part of this, and we will happily name them. Free BIM viewers — Dalux, BIMx, Trimble Connect — show you a model for nothing and are genuinely good at it. AR apps — ARki, Morpholio, SketchUp Viewer — put a model in the room, and some are cheaper than we are. Neither one does the other's job.

 Dalux / BIMx
Free BIM viewers		ARki / Morpholio
AR apps		ARfield
View, measure, comment, share a linkYesLimitedYes
Full-scale AR on the actual siteNoYesYes
Opens your IFC straight from Revit or ArchicadYesNo — wants FBX/GLBYes
Your client has to install an appNoYesNo — just a link
Steel & mechanical CAD (STEP, IGES) tooBIM onlyNoBoth, one tool
Tap an element for its type, level and tagYesNoYes
Survey point cloudsRarelyNoYes
Converted on your device — never uploadedUploaded to their cloudUploadedStays with you
Your practice's brand on the client viewTheirsTheirsYours
Billed in Rands, supported locallyUSD / EURUSDYes

Read down the two middle columns and the gap is the whole product: the BIM viewers can't put the building on the site, and the AR apps can't open your IFC — and they make your client install something.

Comparison based on each product's published features as of August 2026 — check the vendor's own site before relying on it, features change.

Watch it open a real file

No edit, no voiceover, nothing sped up. An IFC is opened in the browser and converted on the spot — this is the actual product, recorded straight off the live site.

Recorded on arfield.app — a six-storey IFC opened, converted in the browser, and orbited. The dimensions on screen are read off the file.

The model never leaves your computer

ARfield converts your file inside your own browser. Cloud viewers have to upload the model to open it. Yours only goes anywhere if you deliberately share it — which matters when the scheme is unbuilt and confidentiality is your professional duty.

Start now — free

Create an account and open your own IFC or STEP in about a minute. No card, and the file is converted on your own machine.

Create a free account Or try a demo model first

Rather we set it up for you?

You do not have to. A free account opens your own IFC or STEP in about a minute. This is here for two cases: you would rather not sign up yet, or the file is awkward — very large, an unusual export, or one that has already given another viewer trouble.

Email or WhatsApp us an IFC or STEP from a live job. We will open it and send back a link you can try on site — no charge and no pitch attached. We delete the file once you have the link, unless you ask us to keep it.

Email the file

We come back to you within one working day.

The same model, on whatever they are holding

No app and no account on either. Both of these are the live product — rendered from arfield.app, not mocked up.

ARfield open on a laptop showing a four-storey apartment building converted from a 47 MB IFC.
On a laptop — full toolset, measure, notes, layers
The same building open on a phone, ready to view at full size in AR on site.
On site — the same link, ready for AR

And it comes back

The person standing in front of the problem is usually not the person who can fix it. So a note goes the other way too — from whoever you sent the link to, straight back to you.

  1. They tap the model where the problem is. On the link you already sent them. No app to install, no account to make, no password to reset on a building site.
  2. You get an email, and it lands in a queue. With their note, their name, and the point on the model they marked. It gets a reference like ARF-1042 that both of you can quote.
  3. It keeps asking until you close it. An unanswered report is chased, not forgotten. When you close it and say what was done, they are told — on a page they open without signing in.

If they leave an email address they get a receipt and can follow it. If they do not, the report still reaches you. Nothing about it requires them to become our user, or yours.

Pricing

Everyone you send a model to views it free, forever, with no account. You only pay for the people creating and managing models.

Plans start at
R450per month

Or R1,200 once off for a single project, hosted a year — most practices put that on the final account.

  • Everyone you send a model to views it free, forever, with no account and no app
  • You only pay for the people creating and managing models
  • A seat is a colleague in your practice, not a client — the people you send models to are free and unlimited. Practice includes 5, Studio 10
  • Notes come back from whoever you sent the link to, with no account at their end
  • No VAT added — the price is the price
  • Cancel any time; you keep access to the end of the period you paid for

Get the full price list

Every plan, what each one includes, and what it costs. Sent straight away.

Your address is used to send you the price list and nothing else unless you tick the box. Privacy.

Not ready to pay? A free account gets 2 active share links, 7-day expiry, no card.
Start free

Not VAT registered, so the prices above are what you pay. White-label licensing on request. Subscription prices are reviewed once a year and may rise in line with South African CPI; we give 30 days' notice before any change. See full pricing →

From the workshop

What we find taking real architect-issued models onto real sites — the IFC traps, the export settings, and the numbers behind the claims on this page.

IFC

The IFC unit trap that makes a 39 m culvert 1 km long

Civil 3D routinely writes an IFC that declares inches while the coordinates are millimetres. Every measurement you take off it is then wrong by 25.4×, silently, with a confident number attached.

5 August 2026 · 3 min read Workflow

Why your .rvt won't open in a browser — and what to send instead

Every browser-based viewer asks you for an IFC rather than the Revit file itself. That isn't laziness. Here is what each format actually carries, and which one to export for which job.

4 August 2026 · 2 min read Performance

What happened when we ran three real buildings through it

We had only ever tested on a 113 KB sample house. Three architect-issued IFCs later, we found the defect that would have made the product unusable on a real project — and the numbers that fixed it.

2 August 2026 · 2 min read

Read all articles →

Questions we actually get asked

Does it work with Revit?

Yes — through IFC, which Revit exports natively (File → Export → IFC), and the same for Archicad and Vectorworks. Revit's own .rvt is a closed Autodesk format that needs their paid cloud service to read, so IFC is the proper route rather than a workaround. Element names, types, levels and tags all come through.

Is my model safe? Where does it go?

Conversion happens inside your browser — the file is not uploaded to open it. It only leaves your machine if you deliberately create a share link, and then only the converted view is stored, not your source file. See the privacy page.

How big a model can it handle?

We test against real architect-issued buildings, not samples. A 73 MB IFC converts and shares. Large models are compressed roughly 9–16× on the way through, so what your client downloads on mobile data is a fraction of the original.

Does the person I send it to need an app or account?

No. They open a link in whatever browser is already on their phone or laptop. They can view, measure and take snapshots without ever signing up, and that stays free.

How accurate is placing it on the actual site?

Straight browser GPS is accurate to roughly 2–50 m, which is right for "walk to about here" and wrong for setting out. We say so in the app rather than letting you find out. Precise placement against surveyed control points is on the roadmap.

There are free BIM viewers. Why pay for this?

If you only need to look at a model on a laptop, use one of them — Dalux's is genuinely good and free. Pay for this when you need the building on site at full size, need the fabricator's STEP file open next to the architect's IFC, need point clouds, or need the model not to be uploaded to somebody's cloud.

What about AR apps like ARki? Aren't some of them cheaper?

Yes — ARki Pro works out around R340 a month, which is less than our Solo tier, and it does AR well. Two things it won't do. It wants an FBX or a GLB, so somebody has to convert your Revit or Archicad model first, and the BIM data is gone by the time it arrives — you can't tap a wall and see its type and level. And every person you want to show it to has to install the app, which means an iPhone or iPad: ARki's Android app was pulled from Google Play in 2020 and has not come back. On a South African site, where most site staff carry Android, that rules out the people who most need to see it. We take the IFC straight out of your authoring tool, and your client opens a link on whatever phone they already have — Android or iPhone, no install either way.

Can I open a Revit file directly?

Not the .rvt itself — that format is closed and undocumented, so nobody outside Autodesk reads it properly. Export an IFC, which Revit and Archicad both do in a couple of clicks, and that is the file we read. Same for .dwg and .dwfx: neither carries usable 3D building data. For steel and mechanical work, send STEP.

What if it doesn't suit us?

Start with one project at R1,200 rather than a subscription. If it doesn't earn its place on that job, there's nothing to cancel.

WhatsApp us Try a demo