What is a .CIF file?
CIF stores crystal structure data, the standard in crystallography.
- Did you know
- CIF, adopted in 1991, is how crystal structures are archived and shared.
- CIF is maintained by the International Union of Crystallography, and journals require it when publishing a newly solved crystal structure.
- A CIF is plain text of name-value pairs recording the unit-cell dimensions, symmetry and atomic positions that define a crystal.
- What Analyser reads
- Open scientific, medical and engineering files: DICOM scans, NIfTI brain volumes, Garmin FIT/TCX activities, FITS astronomy frames, FASTA/FASTQ sequences, chemistry structures (MOL/SDF/MOL2/CIF/XYZ), Gerber/Excellon PCB data, SPICE netlists, EDF/BDF biosignals, JCAMP-DX spectra, SPSS/Stata/SAS datasets and VTK/ParaView meshes - metadata extracted entirely in-browser.
- Depth of analysis
- .CIF is an identification-grade format: Analyser recognises it from its bytes and decodes the header metadata it carries, rather than opening it in a full viewer. Formats that do get a full viewer are marked "Full" on the formats page.
- Open a .CIF file
- Drag a .CIF file onto the Analyser home page (or tap to pick one). It is identified entirely in your browser - nothing is uploaded, there is no account, and it works offline once installed.