CIF was developed by the International Union of Crystallography. It was adopted in 1990 as a standard file structure for the archiving and distribution of crystallographic information. The full documentation and specifications of the format can be found here: https://www.iucr.org/resources/cif/documentation#docs.

There are databases which allow you to download CIF files for various minerals.

The American Mineralogist Crystal Structure Database includes every structure published in the American Mineralogist, The Canadian Mineralogist, European Journal of Mineralogy and Physics and Chemistry of Minerals, as well as selected datasets from other journals. It is a good source for mineral CIF files

Pay attention though! The CIF files available in this database correspond to published data in scientific publications. They can be minerals of unusual compositions or unusual conditions of pressure and temperature. Sometimes, basic minerals at ambient P and T are not in the database. The reason is simple: these structures are known and no one will publish a paper in American Mineralogist to describe the structure.

CIF files can used when creating synthetic datasets with PolyXSim for testing and learning Multigrain XRD.

We made a CIF file for olivine in the Pnma space group.

data_Olivine
_audit_creation_method     'manual editing'
_chemical_name_systematic
;
Forsterite
;
_chemical_formula_sum '(Mg2) Si O4'
_cell_length_a 10.1902
_cell_length_b 5.9783
_cell_length_c 4.7534
_cell_angle_alpha 90
_cell_angle_beta 90
_cell_angle_gamma 90
_cell_volume 289.58
_symmetry_cell_setting     'Orthorhombic'
_symmetry_space_group_name_H-M 'P n m a'

loop_
_space_group_symop_operation_xyz
  'x,y,z'
  'x,y,1/2-z'
  '-x,-y,1/2+z'
  '1/2+x,1/2-y,1/2+z'
  '1/2-x,1/2+y,1/2-z'
  '1/2-x,1/2+y,z'
  '1/2+x,1/2-y,-z'
  '-x,-y,-z'

loop_
    _atom_type_symbol
    _atom_type_description 
    'Mg' 'Mg' 
    'Si' 'Si' 
    'O' 'O' 

loop_
_atom_site_label
_atom_site_type_symbol
_atom_site_fract_z
_atom_site_fract_x
_atom_site_fract_y
_atom_site_occupancy
Mg1   'Mg' 0.00000   0.00000   0.00000   1.00000
Mg2   'Mg' 0.99090   0.27650   0.25000   1.00000
Si   'Si' 0.42780   0.09480   0.25000   1.00000
O1   'O' 0.76700   0.09250   0.25000   1.00000
O2   'O' 0.21540   0.44810   0.25000   1.00000
O3   'O' 0.28100   0.16400   0.03350   1.00000

But it do not work right. Some atoms are in double in the unit cell.

Here is the correction :

data_global
_chemical_name_mineral 'Forsterite'
loop_
_publ_author_name
'Miyake M'
'Nakamura H'
'Kojima H'
'Marumo F'
_journal_name_full 'American Mineralogist'
_journal_volume 72 
_journal_year 1987
_journal_page_first 594
_journal_page_last 598
_publ_section_title
;

;
_database_code_amcsd 0001089
_chemical_formula_sum 'Mg2 Si O4'
_cell_length_c 4.779
_cell_length_a 10.277
_cell_length_b 5.995
_cell_angle_alpha 90
_cell_angle_beta 90
_cell_angle_gamma 90
_cell_volume 294.437
_exptl_crystal_density_diffrn      4.271
_symmetry_space_group_name_H-M 'P n m a'
loop_
_space_group_symop_operation_xyz
  'x,y,z'
  'x,1/2-y,z'
  '-x,1/2+y,-z
  '1/2-x,1/2+y,1/2+z'
  '1/2+x,1/2-y,1/2-z'
  '1/2+x,y,1/2-z'
  '1/2-x,-y,1/2+z'
  '-x,-y,-z'
loop_
_atom_site_label
_atom_site_fract_z
_atom_site_fract_x
_atom_site_fract_y
_atom_site_occupancy
Mg1   0.00000   0.00000   0.00000   1.0000
Mg2   0.99090   0.27650   0.25000   1.0000
Si   0.42780   0.09480   0.25000   1.00000
O1   0.76700   0.09250   0.25000   1.00000
O2   0.21540   0.44810   0.25000   1.00000
O3   0.28100   0.16400   0.03350   1.00000

But it has problem to run on PolyXSim. Here is the last correction, which give a correct crystal structure and can be read by PolyXSim.