# IFC 5 and Guid format

**URL:** <https://forums.buildingsmart.org/t/ifc-5-and-guid-format/6164>\
**Category:** Uncategorized\
**Created:** [June 19, 2025, 9:20am UTC](https://forums.buildingsmart.org/t/ifc-5-and-guid-format/6164 "2025-06-19T09:20:28Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 2\
**Page:** 1

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![RenzoVenuti](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/ecd19e/32.png) [@RenzoVenuti](https://forums.buildingsmart.org/u/RenzoVenuti)\
**Post date:** [June 19, 2025, 9:20am UTC](https://forums.buildingsmart.org/t/ifc-5-and-guid-format/6164/1 "2025-06-19T09:20:28Z")

</div>

I’m looking at the ifc 5 master and I noticed that the guid format is changed from 22 characters to 32, but this way I don’t lose the references to the objects stored with the old format?

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![artur\_tomczak](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex016/user_avatar/forums.buildingsmart.org/artur_tomczak/32/2632_2.png) [@artur\_tomczak](https://forums.buildingsmart.org/u/artur_tomczak)\
**Post date:** [June 25, 2025, 10:12am UTC](https://forums.buildingsmart.org/t/ifc-5-and-guid-format/6164/2 "2025-06-25T10:12:15Z")

</div>

Not an expert on GUIDs, but you can go from the IFC’s 22 char to the IFC5 UUID v5.

For example, using IfcOpenShell in Python:

```auto
import ifcopenshell.guid
import uuid

compressed = "0kZ8R2mP8DzeP94rYQk$h2"
hex_str = ifcopenshell.guid.expand(compressed)
as_uuid = uuid.UUID(hex_str)

print(as_uuid)
# → 2e8c86c2-c192-0df6-8649-13589abbfac2

```