Bentley OpenRail Designer
MicroStation-based rail network design application for conceptual and detailed railway corridor design -- yard/station layout, track geometry, turnout/switch placement, overhead line electrification, signaling, and tunnel design, serving light rail, metro, heavy rail, high-speed rail, and MAGLEV projects across international standards.
Made by Bentley Systems, public (BSY, $10.1B)
2.8 /5 composite score
Situational -- genuinely purpose-built for rail infrastructure (track geometry, cant algorithms, overhead line electrification) with published pricing ($9,383/yr via Virtuosity) and iTwin Platform REST APIs inherited from the Bentley ecosystem, but the MicroStation dependency and DOT/agency-scale price point make it impractical for any practice smaller than a dedicated rail transit group.
Situational
Rubric Scorecard
| Criterion | Score | Evidence |
|---|---|---|
| Value for the price | 2/5 | Subscription, from $9383 |
| Agent Friendliness | 4/5 | API: iTwin Platform REST API (iModels API, schedules API) + iTwin.js SDK; MicroStation MDL + .NET desktop SDK |
| Ease of adoption | 2/5 | -- |
| Portability & lock-in | 3/5 | 9 file formats |
| Interoperability | 3/5 | 5 integrations |
How we verified this: we checked Bentley OpenRail Designer against its live site and an independent source — en.wikipedia.org. Nothing on this page is listed from memory. See how we grade. Verified 2026-07-05.
Evidence
File formats
| Format | Direction | Support |
|---|---|---|
| DGN | unknown | unknown |
| LandXML | unknown | unknown |
| IFC | unknown | unknown |
| DWG | unknown | unknown |
| DXF | unknown | unknown |
| PDF/U3D | unknown | unknown |
| Rhino 3DM | unknown | unknown |
| STL | unknown | unknown |
| SketchUp SKP | unknown | unknown |
Integrations
ProjectWise iTwin Platform SYNCHRO LumenRT OpenBridge Designer
Pricing detail
Billing unitper-seat
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