Bentley OpenBuildings Designer

Subscription Produce & Issue Documents

Multidiscipline BIM authoring platform built on the MicroStation CAD engine for architectural, structural, and MEP design, with built-in energy analysis and GenerativeComponents parametric modeling -- Bentley's direct Revit competitor.

Made by Bentley Systems, public (BSY, $10.1B)

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3.0 /5 composite score

C2 4/5 reflects the iTwin Platform REST APIs plus MicroStation and OpenBuildings SDK customization, and C5 4/5 reflects ProjectWise, iTwin Platform, OpenBuildings Energy Simulator, GenerativeComponents, LumenRT, Hevacomp, and NBS Chorus integrations. C4 3/5 reflects native DGN workflows with partial DWG and IFC exchange, and firm-size fit is small-team to growing.

Solid

Rubric Scorecard

How we grade →

Criterion	Score	Evidence
Value for the price	2/5	Subscription, from $2686 Source →
Agent Friendliness	4/5	API: Bentley iTwin Platform REST APIs (cloud, operate on iModels without a desktop host) + MicroStation/OpenBuildings SDK (in-app customization)
Ease of adoption	2/5	--
Portability & lock-in	3/5	3 file formats Source →
Interoperability	4/5	7 integrations

Pricing

ModelSubscription

Entry price$2686

Free tierno

Trialyes

Billing unitper-seat

Visit Bentley OpenBuildings Designer →

How we verified this: we checked Bentley OpenBuildings Designer against its live site and an independent source — en.virtuosity.com. Nothing on this page is listed from memory. See how we grade. Verified 2026-07-07.

Evidence

File formats

Format	Direction	Support
DGN	native	full -- Vendor: "The V8 DGN file format is OpenBuildings Designer's native file format."
DWG	both	partial -- Full entity support only for AutoCAD 2006 and earlier; AutoCAD 2007+ features (materials, lights, annotative objects, layer viewport overrides, geometric constraints) are read-only.
IFC	both	partial -- Import attaches read-only as a reference (or imports as DGN); export supports IFC2x3 (multiple MVDs) and IFC4, but the IFC4 Design Transfer View is labeled a Technology Preview.

Integrations

ProjectWise iTwin Platform OpenBuildings Energy Simulator GenerativeComponents LumenRT Hevacomp NBS Chorus

Sources

Formats Pricing

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