Company Overview
Bentley Systems, Incorporated is an American infrastructure engineering software company headquartered in Exton, Pennsylvania. Founded in 1984, Bentley develops MicroStation and a broad portfolio of applications for roads, bridges, rail, utilities, water, and industrial plants — focusing on infrastructure rather than buildings.
Bentley's strategy centers on infrastructure digital twins — connecting design models with reality data (photos, point clouds, IoT sensors) to create living digital representations of physical assets. The company's iTwin Platform provides an open framework for creating and visualizing these digital twins.
Key Products
- MicroStation: 2D/3D design platform for infrastructure engineering — supports DGN and DWG formats with parametric modeling capabilities.
- OpenRoads Designer: Civil design for roads, drainage, and site — combines plan, profile, and corridor design with survey data integration.
- STAAD.Pro: Structural analysis and design software supporting international building codes for steel, concrete, timber, and aluminum structures.
- iTwin Platform: Open digital-twin platform for synchronizing, visualizing, and analyzing infrastructure data from multiple sources.
Products in our knowledge base (3)
Market Position & Strategy
Bentley Systems specializes in infrastructure engineering software, covering roads, bridges, rail, water networks, power grids, and industrial facilities. While Autodesk dominates the building sector of AEC, Bentley holds strong positions in horizontal infrastructure—particularly in departments of transportation, rail operators, and utility companies worldwide.
The iTwin platform represents Bentley's digital-twin strategy: a cloud infrastructure for creating, visualizing, and analyzing digital twins of infrastructure assets using data from design models, IoT sensors, reality capture, and maintenance records. Bentley's 2020 IPO funded expansion of this platform vision.
Bentley's acquisition history reflects its infrastructure focus: acquiring MicroStation's parent Intergraph (via Hexagon partnership), RAM Structural (structural analysis), STAAD (structural analysis), OpenFlows (hydraulic analysis), and ProjectWise (collaboration). This portfolio creates integrated workflows for infrastructure projects that span multiple engineering disciplines.
Technology Platform
MicroStation uses its own DGN file format, which predates DWG and remains actively developed. The V8i and CONNECT editions brought 3D modeling, parametric capabilities, and BIM workflows to MicroStation, though its traditional strength remains in large-scale 2D/3D infrastructure documentation where precision and large-coordinate-system handling are critical.
OpenRoads and OpenBridge build on MicroStation's engine to provide discipline-specific tools for road and bridge design. The OpenRoads corridor modeling engine computes 3D road geometry from alignment and cross-section definitions, integrating with the GEOPAK/InRoads legacy that many DOTs still rely on.
ProjectWise provides document and model management for infrastructure projects, handling the version control, access control, and audit trail requirements that regulated infrastructure projects demand. Its integration with MicroStation and OpenRoads is tighter than third-party document management alternatives.
Learning Resources
- Bentley Learning: Official training portal with courses covering MicroStation, OpenRoads, OpenBridge, STAAD, and RAM Structural.
- Bentley Education: Free academic licenses and curricula for universities teaching infrastructure engineering courses.
- Year in Infrastructure Conference: Annual event showcasing infrastructure project case studies and product updates.