Bentley Connects iTwin and Cesium, Unlocking New Possibilities

• 26 September 2025
• Construction Focus
• 1357 Views

Bentley Systems recently made new resources available to help developers integrate its iTwin program with Cesium, a well-known 3D geospatial visualization technology.

This new combination of digital twins for infrastructure and large-scale geospatial applications follows Bentley’s acquisition of Cesium in September 2024.

According to Bentley, the iTwin Platform provides a programming interface for creating and managing digital twins—data-rich virtual models used across the lifecycle of infrastructure assets.

At the same time, Cesium is known for its 3D globe and mapping technology and for originating the 3D Tiles open standard, widely adopted for streaming large-scale 3D datasets.

Bentley added that the combination allows developers to combine geospatial data from Cesium ion with engineering design information from iTwin and display both in one single environment.

Key functions highlighted include:

Data integration: Support for engineering formats from applications such as MicroStation, Revit, AutoCAD, Navisworks, and Rhino. Data is automatically converted into optimised 3D Tiles for visualisation.

Design history: APIs allow applications to display versioned design states, enabling comparisons of alternate options.

Metadata access: ECSQL support makes it possible to query and filter models based on attributes.

Project workflows: Developers can incorporate tasks such as clash detection, change management, and issue tracking directly within Cesium-based applications.

Bentley currently offers three tutorials. They teach you how to add real-world locations, view iTwin designs in CesiumJS, and switch between different design versions. In the future, they will release more tutorials that will show you how to search for model information, find specific model parts, combine multiple designs, and use more advanced iTwin tools.

• iTwin
• MicroStation
• Cesium
• Bentley Systems