Route 1: by hand, from a template
Open a COBie template and transcribe the Facility, Floor, Space, Type and Component data from the model and its drawings. It works, it needs no special software, and it is honest about one thing: scale. A modest project is hundreds of thousands of rows, and complex buildings run past a million. Manual entry at that volume is slow and error-prone.
Use it for tiny scopes, or to add the data a model never held: warranty, spares, commissioning records.
Route 2: a desktop viewer plugin
Tools like the BIMvision COBie Exporter open the IFC in a desktop viewer and write the spreadsheet for you. Faster than typing, and the rows keep the IFC GUIDs so they trace back to objects. The catch is a Windows install, a per-tool plugin fee, and no verdict on whether the COBie that came out is any good.
Route 3: in the browser
Drop the IFC into a browser tab and the asset-register sheets are mapped straight from the model. No install, no authoring tool, and the file is parsed locally so it never uploads. This is what cobiereport does, and it returns a gap report alongside the workbook, which is the part the other two routes leave to you.
The part everyone skips: is it complete?
Every IFC-to-COBie tool can only export what is in the model. Most COBie drops arrive with missing required fields, and a tool that does not check will hand you the gaps without naming them. That is why the gap report matters: a readiness score, the missing required fields, and the elements responsible, ranked worst first, so you fix the model, not the spreadsheet.