Cesium for Omniverse v0.30.0

Cesium for Unity Samples v1.26.1

CesiumJS 1.147

Cesium ion

Today, we are thrilled to announce our latest Cesium release, bringing a major set of CAD and BIM capabilities to production. Several foundational design workflows released earlier this year are now Generally Available (GA), including design model ingestion, importing models from Bentley Infrastructure Cloud (BIC), geolocation with new previews before tiling, and automatically generating terrain-clipping footprints with Clipping Assist. Design model querying is also moving to GA, with new capabilities to execute aggregate metadata queries, such as calculating material quantities across design elements.

Alongside these GA workflows, we’re introducing a new set of Technology Previews that unlock even deeper interaction and analysis of design models. We're introducing building BIM-style model tree navigation, improvements to version-to-version change detection to inspect, review, and collaborate across the entire project lifecycle, and precision edge snapping for measurement tools in Cesium ion SDK.

Build a new generation of design-driven applications with Cesium. Stream BIM/CAD models from Cesium ion into real-world context, and explore workflows for georeferencing, clipping, querying engineering data, calculating quantities, navigating model trees, and measuring precisely with snapping. 

Stream BIM/CAD models from Cesium ion into real-world context, and explore workflows for georeferencing, clipping, querying engineering data, calculating quantities, navigating model trees, and measuring precisely with snapping.

Build a New Generation of Design-Driven Applications

These updates build on the work we began earlier this year to broaden support for design formats and bring richer capabilities, including model metadata queries and change detection. Developed with feedback from the Cesium community, these capabilities are already helping organizations build applications around design data that support confident decision-making by bringing greater interactivity and intelligence to design workflows across the project lifecycle. With the release of Cesium ion MCP, these workflows can now be performed using your preferred AI tools.

From design review and stakeholder engagement to digital delivery, construction, and operations, these capabilities help teams communicate proposed changes, collaborate in shared context, and make better informed decisions as projects evolve. Read on to explore the latest additions.

This summer we leveraged existing Bentley technology to add a new Cesium ion tiler for the most common BIM/CAD formats: AutoCAD, Revit, IFC, and DGN. In September, we added the ability to update design models and an API to compare versions. The BIM/CAD Tiler is now in GA, and we’re excited to see how the community adopts it for production workflows. We’re working with users to roll out final enhancements to the change detection API, with GA planned for December.

Today, we’re also excited to announce these additional GA features for managing design models with Cesium.

Many design models are created in a real-world coordinate system, but file formats and authoring tools may omit or incorrectly configure the information that identifies which coordinate system the model uses. Without this information, the model cannot be positioned automatically and reliably.

New georeferencing workflows available soon in Cesium ion add a preview step before the model is tiled. Users can see where the model is geolocated, validate its position, and correct any issues before tiling begins.

Instead of waiting for tiling to finish only to discover that the model is in the wrong location, users can identify positioning issues earlier and proceed with greater confidence.

The new georeferencing workflow lets users preview and correct model positioning before tiling, avoiding time lost tiling a model in the wrong location.

Placing a design into its real-world context often requires clipping existing terrain or 3D content around the project area, often done manually by the user, taking up valuable time.

To accelerate this process, ion can now automatically generate a GeoJSON footprint from a 3D Tileset for use as a clipping polygon. Instead of creating the clipping polygon entirely by hand, users get a starting point they can review and refine, reducing the manual work required to integrate the design with its surroundings, potentially saving users hours of time.

Cesium ion clipping assist generates a GeoJSON footprint for a 3D Tileset, saving time when preparing 3D scenes.

i95 Highway Interchange Clipping

Complement Bentley Infrastructure Cloud projects with custom Cesium workflows

Infrastructure designs often live in established but disconnected systems, making it difficult to combine them with the 3D, reality, geospatial, and business data needed for broader project workflows.

Users can now add iModels from Bentley Infrastructure Cloud to Cesium ion and combine them with these datasets in Cesium applications—without exporting or duplicating the source design.

This lets teams continue using Bentley applications for core design and delivery, while using Cesium to build custom workflows that complement those applications and address needs beyond them.

From model to metrics: an illustrative quantity dashboard in Cesium for a steel girder bridge from Bentley Infrastructure Cloud.

Element API

Rich, queryable design data has long been easier to reach in vertical construction, where IFC and Revit workflows are well established. Horizontal infrastructure has been more difficult: alignments, corridors, and the nuance of civil design do not fit as neatly. The Cesium ion Asset Elements API, now in GA, is a meaningful step toward closing that gap, making engineering data queryable across supported design formats so that users can build on it in any application.

The API now returns more of the information behind each element. For example, IFC property sets that were previously unavailable are accessible, giving applications more of the original design information to use in queries, visualizations, and calculations. 

With a more complete view of each element, applications can make greater use of the original design information across querying, visualization, and calculation workflows.

IFC type information and property sets are now available through the Cesium ion Asset Elements API. Design model from the Autodesk Revit 2025 sample library.

Finding individual elements is useful, but many design workflows also need to summarize information across a model to accelerate decisions.

Queries through the Asset Elements API can now calculate the count, minimum, maximum, average, or sum of properties across matching elements. For example, an estimator could count all concrete slabs on a selected level and calculate their combined concrete volume in cubic meters. Combined with the Change Detection API, they could then limit that calculation to just the slabs added, modified, or removed between two design revisions, helping price a design change without re-measuring the entire model.

These capabilities are also exposed through the Cesium ion MCP, enabling LLM-powered tools to query and analyze engineering data in response to natural-language requests. A reviewer could ask for the total rebar weight by bar size, identify values outside expected ranges, or compare quantities between design revisions. This makes it possible to answer practical engineering questions conversationally, without building a dedicated interface for every workflow.

With the Elements API, Cesium enables developers to explore design models, ask meaningful questions, and connect engineering information to new applications, including AI-powered workflows. Because data structure and metadata vary from one model to another, the information available through the API, and the effectiveness of queries against it, can vary as well. Consistent, well-organized model data helps developers get the most from these capabilities. 

Rebar takeoff for a proposed bridge design, showing bar counts, weights, and lengths calculated using Cesium ion APIs. Model courtesy of JMT.

New tools for interacting with design models

Build familiar ways to navigate complex models with model trees

Complex design models can contain thousands of elements organized across levels, disciplines, and assemblies, making them difficult to understand through the 3D view alone.

New experimental APIs expose model hierarchy without prescribing how it must be presented, so users can build familiar BIM-style tree views organized for their application. Parent lineage and children queries also make it possible to show where a selected element sits in the model, explore the components within an assembly, and connect hierarchy-based navigation with selection and other workflows.

This gives end users a familiar way to navigate complex engineering content while allowing each application to tailor the structure and experience to its needs.

A model tree built using the new APIs, showing individual models, categories, and elements. Model courtesy of JMT.

Placing measurement points precisely on detailed engineering geometry can be difficult when users must rely on approximate pointer placement.

The measurement tools in the Cesium ion SDK are now enhanced with snapping, allowing users to place measurement points directly on edges in the model geometry.

This makes measurements more predictable and gives users greater confidence when reviewing dimensions and distances in complex design models.

The Cesium ion and CesiumJS snapping APIs are experimental while we gather community feedback.

Take precise measurements by snapping directly to engineering geometry in CesiumJS and the Cesium ion SDK.

snapping_measurement_CLIP

A foundation for design-driven applications

The capabilities introduced throughout 2026 provide a strong foundation for exciting new applications across the infrastructure lifecycle, from design review and digital delivery through construction and operations. Explore the latest workflows with your own engineering models, share what you build, and continue helping us shape what comes next. 

Visit our tutorials to get started and discover what you can build with Cesium.

Build a New Generation of Design-Driven Applications with Cesium

This month’s Cesium releases make it easier to build design-driven applications that connect engineering models with real-world context and turn design data into actionable information. New and enhanced capabilities automatically generate clipping footprints, query and calculate quantities from engineering data, navigate complex models through model hierarchies, and measure more precisely with snapping. Together, these updates reduce manual work and give developers more powerful ways to build interactive workflows around infrastructure design data. Look for an in-depth blog post and tutorials later this week. 

If you’re at FOSS4G NA in Sacramento, join us at 4:30 p.m. PST on Tuesday, November 3, for Gabby’s talk, and stop by the Cesium table to chat with the team.

Cesium ion APIs enable a new generation of design-driven applications, such as this rebar takeoff for a proposed bridge design, showing calculated bar counts, weights, and lengths. Model courtesy JMT. 

Gabby Getz and Luke McKinstry are at FOSS4G NA in Sacramento, California, USA.

We made improvements across Cesium this month. To get notifications about our monthly releases, you can subscribe to the Cesium release roundup thread on our community forum.

CesiumJS 1.147 is now available. This month's release includes new support for Cesium ion's Element Service, allowing easy access to new APIs for querying and performing calculations on BIM/CAD model properties and to build BIM-style tree views for end user navigation. It also includes several bug fixes and memory management improvements. 

Fixed undeclared dependencies earcut, mersenne-twister, and urijs. #13955 

Added experimental IonAssetElementService for querying, filtering, aggregating, and navigating element metadata for Cesium ion assets backed by BIM/CAD databases, along with the extensible ElementService base class.#13995 

Added support for glTF models with the KHR_materials_emissive_strength extension to improve control over the lighting pipeline. #13961 

Fixed czm_passOverlay and czm_passCesium3DTileEdgesDirect GLSL constants not matching czm_pass during their respective passes. Removed the unused czm_passClassification constant. #13657 

Fixed dynamic environment lighting on models and tilesets near or below the ellipsoid surface. #13988 

Fixed pointCloudShading.backFaceCulling not hiding back-facing points on some platforms. #13989 

Fixed Cesium3DTileset repeatedly loading and unloading the same tiles when they don't fit within cacheBytes plus maximumCacheOverflowBytes. #13999 

Added edge snapping to all measurement tools. Snapping is enabled by default, can be temporarily disabled while placing points, and supports optional server-side refinement for BIM/CAD assets. 

Two emissive models with different emissive strengths, showcasing the new support for the KHR_materials_emissive_strength glTF extension. Models courtesy Khronos Group. 

Cesium for Unreal v2.31.0 is now available. Highlights of this release include: 

Added a button to refresh the Blueprint style instance on CesiumFeaturesMetadataComponent, allowing it to apply changes in Editor and at runtime. 

Fixed compile errors when building the plugin from source with Unreal Engine's unreachable-code warnings treated as errors. 

Fixed an out-of-bounds access in UCesiumGeoJsonObjectBlueprintLibrary::GetObjectAsMultiLineString. 

Check the Cesium for Unreal release and the Cesium for Unreal Samples release for the full list of updates.

Download the Cesium for Unreal plugin from Epic Marketplace

New York City 3D Buildings in Cesium for Unreal, streamed from Cesium ion and styled by building ownership through Blueprints. 

Cesium for Unity v1.26.1 is now available. This release updates cesium-native from v0.65.0 to v0.66.0, which includes bugfixes such as: 

Fixed potential integer overflow and out-of-bounds write while decoding glTFs with EXT_meshopt_compression. 

Fixed potential heap overflow and added other safeguards when decoding Draco-compressed glTFs. 

See the changelog for a complete list of changes in cesium-native. 

Check the Cesium for Unity changelog for the full list of updates, and follow our Cesium for Unity tutorials to get started. 

Cesium for Omniverse v0.30.0 is now available. Highlights of this release include: 

Breaking change: Cesium for Omniverse now requires a C++ 20 compiler. For Windows builds, MSVC 14.29 is required. 

Cesium for Omniverse no longer provides its own certificates; instead, it uses a list of common search paths for various OSs to locate certificates. 

Peruse the changelog for the full list of updates, and get started with our Cesium for Omniverse tutorials. 

Download the Cesium for Omniverse extension

Download the Cesium for Omniverse samples

**Cesium ion SaaS**

- Now in General Availability: Cesium ion BIM/CAD tiler and iModel import from Bentley Infrastructure Cloud. In combination with other features in this and recent releases, Cesium is enabling a new generation of design-driven applications. Look for a blog post and tutorials later this week.  
- The Cesium ion Asset Elements query routes have advanced to General Availability. Enhancements make more engineering data available for querying across supported design formats. With a more complete view of each element, applications can make greater use of the original design information across querying, visualization, and calculation workflows. Corresponding CesiumJS JavaScript wrappers make it easy to use these routes in your applications. 
- Added experimental API routes to build familiar BIM-style tree views in end user applications. A corresponding CesiumJS JavaScript wrapper makes it easy to use in your applications.  
- Added "Clipping assist" to Cesium ion. For geolocated 3D Tiles assets with mesh data, select the asset in My Assets and choose "Clipping assist" in the right-hand details pane. Cesium ion will create a clipping polygon and save it as a new GeoJSON asset. This generated suggestion is a starting point, so review the clip's boundaries before use. You can also create clips via API. 

**Tilers**

- Fixed an issue where an invalid CRS could cause a crash rather than reporting an error. 
- 3D Tiling Pipeline: Fixed an issue on Windows where certain filesystem checks would fail for paths with non-ASCII characters. 

The Cesium ion clipping assist feature created a generated clip of your 3D Tiles model.

CNN journalists worked with Kayhan Space to verify Russian satellite capabilities and behavior. Kayhan Space's Satcat uses CesiumJS. 

Rockpile Solutions uses CesiumJS to fuse drone scans, Bing Maps, and precise GPS positioning for real-time 3D tracking of earthworks fleets. 

TruGolf uses Cesium for Unreal to fuse custom and global datasets, placing virtual golf courses in their exact real-world locations for an immersive player experience. 

The student-run Space Technologies Laboratory at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University is using Cesium Moon and Cesium for Unreal to test the camera system on EagleCam 2.0 before it flies on the IM-3 mission—and takes the first lunar selfie. 

What does a Moon landing look like? The student-run Space Technologies Laboratory (STL) at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University is using Cesium Moon and Cesium for Unreal to test the camera system on EagleCam 2.0 before it flies on the IM-3 mission—and takes the first lunar selfie. 

STL used Cesium to build a digital twin of the camera system and large-scale lunar terrain to test settings and learn when to apply adjustments during the mission. Courtesy Embry-Riddle Space Technologies Laboratory.

The student-run Space Technologies Laboratory (STL) at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University is using Cesium Moon and Cesium for Unreal to test the camera system on EagleCam 2.0 before it flies on the IM-3 mission—and takes the first lunar selfie.

Embry-Riddle STL EagleCam 2.0

IM-3 is part of the NASA Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) program, expected to fly before the end of 2026, and EagleCam 2.0’s job is gathering information-rich images for examination post flight. Instead of building a physical prototype of Intuitive Machines’ lunar lander to assess mounting configurations, spending limited lab budget on the wrong lenses, and imaging ground that doesn’t match that of Earth’s natural satellite, STL used Cesium to build a digital twin of the camera system and large-scale lunar terrain to test settings and learn when to apply adjustments during the mission. 

STL develops hardware for commercial missions and research partners and has 15-20 students, undergrads through PhD candidates, actively working on the 10 cm x 10 cm x 10 cm EagleCam. Two to three of those students work on the digital twin. EagleCam is fully student designed, built, and operated. 

This is the second time a university has sent a payload to the Moon; the first was EagleCam 1.0. 

Work on EagleCam 2.0 began in 2025. The challenges STL saw on EagleCam 1.0—such as predicting lunar lighting, camera placement, fisheye behavior, and coverage—pushed the team to build a digital twin to inform EagleCam 2.0’s life cycle. 

EagleCam is fully student designed, built, and operated. Courtesy Embry-Riddle Space Technologies Laboratory.

To see the Moon before IM-3 lands (or even lifts off), STL uses Cesium Moon and Cesium for Unreal. STL streams Cesium Moon—a single complete 3D Tileset composed of precise terrain and imagery from NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) program and other sources—via Cesium ion SaaS to the EagleCam digital twin in Unreal Engine. Individual students have their own ion accounts, so they can fuse assets relevant to their parts of the mission, like high-res geoTIFFs of the landing site. 

Because Cesium Moon is 3D Tiles, details load based on the active camera instead of forcing the lab to manage one enormous Moon mesh, improving development and navigation. 

On top of Cesium Moon, STL added the flight camera's sensor and lens properties, camera position and orientation, realistic exposure controls, roughly 100,000-lux sunlight, and time-based Sun–Earth–Moon geometry from NASA SPICE through the MaxQ Spaceflight Toolkit in Unreal Engine. Unreal produces six render targets per lens, combines them into a fisheye image, and can export image sets for calibration or NASA Ames Stereo Pipeline processing. The team also added orbit trajectories to test maneuvers and observe field of view (FOV) during them. 

Building out the digital twin took five to six months, but now Sam Nikolov and his labmates can add lens specs and get renderings in minutes. Cesium Moon provides the mission-relevant geospatial context as an accurate 3D base layer, STL’s camera model generates synthetic stereo images, and the NASA Ames Stereo Pipeline reconstructs terrain from those images, all in Unreal Engine. (STL also uses Cesium for Unity for quick lens-shader prototyping.) Instead of a made-up lens paired with a random spot on the Moon to show what shots might look like, STL gets accurate predictions that support decisions on which lenses and what settings will achieve usable imagery. A 240,000-mile trip is not a simple service call; validating the hardware before launch is vital. 

Nikolov, who is dedicated to software development, including firmware on satellite, image processing, and digital twins at STL, explained: “Without Cesium, we would have had to find, process, package, georeference, stream, and render high-resolution lunar terrain ourselves. That would have taken a huge amount of effort and added risk before we even reached the camera problem we actually cared about. Cesium gave our two- to three-person subgroup the terrain, coordinate, LOD, and streaming backbone so we could focus on the lens, calibration, lighting, and operations use case. Cesium ion has never let us down.” 

The challenges STL saw on EagleCam 1.0 pushed the team to build a digital twin to inform EagleCam 2.0’s life cycle. Courtesy Embry-Riddle Space Technologies Laboratory.

Nikolov reports that the biggest success is that the simulated images look extremely close to the lab’s real camera references under matched settings. The lab selects a date and time, photographs the Moon outside, considers atmospheric conditions, and compares the result with the simulated view—both visually convincing and correct. 

As IM-3 flies to the Moon, STL can consult the digital twin to check expected camera settings and FOV and assess if the returned data will be sufficient for analysis. This means the digital twin supports EagleCam throughout its life cycle: design, hardware selection and placement, mission rehearsal, operations, and post-flight analysis. 

Watch Sam Nikolov’s 2026 Cesium Developer Conference lightning talk to learn about the role Cesium plays in EagleCam 2.0. 

Seeing the Moon before we get there: Game-engine digital twin for lunar imaging - Samuil Nikolov

With Cesium, STL’s EagleCam digital twin enables reduced risk, faster iteration, better design confidence, stronger research output, and a better foundation for future partnerships. It’s also an immersive, intuitive version of the students’ hard work on distortion curves and drawings.  

To add Cesium Moon to your Cesium for Unreal projects, follow this guide. 

Embry-Riddle Uses Cesium Moon to Test EagleCam 2.0 Camera System

We’re happy to announce that the Cesium ion MCP Server is now available, enabling anyone to connect their 3D geospatial data to the AI tools they already use: coding tools like Claude Code, OpenAI Codex, Cursor, and GitHub Copilot, and general-purpose assistants like Claude Desktop and ChatGPT.  AI is enabling everyone, not just developers, to build powerful 3D geospatial applications.

With the ion MCP Server, an agent in one of those tools can work directly with your Cesium ion account, using natural language to find the right dataset, check whether a model has finished tiling, or query individual elements inside a design model tiled with our new BIM/CAD tiler. And if you're a developer building an application with embedded agents, you can give them access to the MCP Server, enabling agent-driven access to your ion data and metadata for your users to work with.

A coding agent locating a Cesium ion asset and wiring it into a CesiumJS viewer, without a single hand-written REST call.

coding-agent-with-ion-mcp_wTxt3

The Model Context Protocol (MCP) is an open standard for connecting AI models to external tools and data through a stable, typed interface. Open standards, including 3D Tiles and glTF, are integral to how we build at Cesium, so extending our approach to the open agentic ecosystem was a natural next step. And because we host the server, there's nothing to deploy: your tools connect directly and act on your ion data and metadata without a single REST call.

To get started, check out our documentation.

This first version of the server collects the most important parts of the Cesium ion REST API into a set of tools an agent can call directly. It's a focused starting point rather than the full API surface, and we'll grow it over time based on what the community needs.

After you authenticate with your Cesium ion account, the server exposes tools to your agent to act on your behalf. You can ask an agent something like "Find the latest photogrammetry model of Philadelphia," and it will use those tools to track it down in your ion account.

The server also exposes our new Asset Element APIs, giving agents the ability to run detailed queries inside design models created with our new BIM/CAD tiler directly from ion. An agent can search for specific components (for example, "List all structural elements") and return the matches you need.

Querying asset metadata in natural language and getting back structured, ready-to-use results.

The ion MCP Server supports multiple workflows, depending on whether you're building software or exploring data.

Build with a coding agent. From a coding tool like Claude Code, Codex, Cursor, or GitHub Copilot, you can stay in your editor instead of leaving to look up an asset ID or poll a tiling job. Ask "Check whether the Louvre asset has finished tiling, then write the code to add it to my viewer," and the agent verifies the status, retrieves the asset ID, and writes the code for you.

Embed an agent in your own app. Give your app's built-in agents access to the same server so your users can interact with large BIM/CAD models conversationally. A user might ask, "Show me all of the pipes with the same material and cross section in my model," and the agent will use the Element API to resolve the IDs and locations for visualization.

Explore your data in a general-purpose chat assistant. Connect the server to a desktop assistant like Claude Desktop or ChatGPT and query your repository in plain language: "Show me assets tagged 'Architecture' added this month that're larger than 100 MB." No REST endpoints and no JSON to parse, just the answers you're after.

One MCP server, three workflows: building in code, embedding an agent in your own app, and exploring data in chat.

Every request runs through a Cesium ion account. An agent authenticates over OAuth 2.0 and acts within your existing account permissions, so it can only see the assets and take the actions you are already authorized to perform yourself. The server can take write actions such as uploads and tiling, not just reads, and instructs your agent to ask permission before performing an action that would modify your data. And as always, your data is your data; we won't use it train AI models. (See Bentley's AI policies here.)

This is our first release, and we're building it in the open with the community. Because it covers a focused subset of the API to start, your feedback will directly shape what comes next: tell us which additional tools you'd like added or what other improvements you're looking for.  Share your thoughts on the Cesium Community Forum.

In mid-September we announced our second major technology preview focused on design model workflows in Cesium, including the ability to report on the differences between versions of BIM/CAD design models using the Cesium ion API. Cesium ion now also manages source files separately from tiled data.  

Our October runtime releases deliver many improvements and fixes, including enhancements for working with the new 3D Tiles 2.0 vector tiles data format in CesiumJS and the ability to use Blueprints to drive styling in Cesium for Unreal.  

We will also be hosting two webinars this month: on October 13 we'll be digging into our new vector tiles support, and on October 21 we’ll host our quarterly training and technical exchange for US government employees. We look forward to seeing you there! 

CesiumJS 1.146 is now available. This month's release focuses on improvements to vector tile rendering and extracts CesiumJS's fundamental math, geometry, and time primitives into a separate packages/core workspace to create a lightweight, dependency-isolated package that can be used independently by external consumers, advancing the long-term CesiumJS goal of publishing smaller, more modular packages.  

By isolating core functionality with no external dependencies, the new package gives consumers the option to adopt only the core mathematical utilities they need without the overhead of the entire engine, establishing a pattern for splitting out domain-specific code like glTF loading from @cesium/engine for easier updates and testing. 

CesiumJS now publishes a new package, @cesium/core, containing the math, geometry, time, and utility classes that were previously part of @cesium/engine. #13805 

Fixed draped polylines rendering at the wrong width at large widths, in both pixels and meters width units. #13737 

Added vectorBlendOption to Cesium3DTileset, for selecting opaque or translucent modes. blendOption can now also be changed after construction on BufferPointCollection, BufferPolylineCollection, and BufferPolygonCollection. This corrects an issue where rendering vector datasets resulted in incorrect blending. #13764 

Reduced load time and memory usage for implicitly tiled tilesets. The app now loads 23× faster and uses 13× less memory on a benchmark large building dataset. #13808 

Improved support in CesiumJS for rendering wide vector lines, in both "pixels" and "meters" width units. Data from HydroSHEDS version 1 database from © World Wildlife Fund, Inc. and Cesium World Terrain.

Cesium for Unreal v2.30.0 is now available. Highlights of this release include: 

Added support for styling features in ACesium3DTileset with Blueprints, using a specified BlueprintStyleClass that implements ICesium3DTilesStylingProvider on UCesiumFeaturesMetadataComponent. 

Added support for per-element styling on CesiumVectorTilesRasterOverlay, using either a specified Blueprint class implementing ICesiumVectorTilesStylingCallbacks or a C++ class derived from CesiumVectorOverlays::VectorStylingProvider. 

Fixed a bug that made FCesiumCamera use incorrect parameters when its source was set to ECameraParameterSource::CameraComponent. 

In addition to the above, this release updates cesium-native from v0.64.0 to v0.65.0. See the changelog for a complete list of changes in cesium-native. 

Difficulty of ski runs at Mount Snow, Vermont, USA, visualized in Cesium for Unreal using the CesiumVectorTilesRasterOverlay’s new styling capabilities. Data © OpenStreetMap contributors and OpenSkiMap.org.

Cesium for Unity v1.26.0 is now available. Highlights of this release include: 

Added CesiumVectorPointStyle and a pointStyle field on CesiumVectorStyle, enabling CesiumGeoJsonDocumentRasterOverlay to render GeoJSON Point and MultiPoint features. 

Added support for loading CesiumCartographicPolygons from polygons in GeoJSON files. 

**Cesium ion SaaS** 

- Added the ability to create versions of BIM/CAD Database assets: Cesium ion now supports the re-upload of source files to update a BIM/CAD Database tileset which creates multiple versions of meshes from the database. 
- Improved file management: Cesium ion source files and tiled assets are now stored separately in Cesium ion, giving you more control over your storage quota and laying the foundation for new ion workflows. Read more and let us know what you think on [the community forum](https://community.cesium.com/t/improved-file-management-in-cesium-ion/47161). 
- Increase storage quotas: Your storage quota has been doubled! Look for an email from us with details. 
- Added a new API endpoint to search for valid CRS codes using geocode-scoped tokens. This enables developers to programmatically discover and validate CRS values when ingesting design models via the API. 
- Added new change detection API routes for mesh assets created from the same BIM/CAD Database asset. 

**Buildings tiler**

- Added limited support for CityGML 3.0 generic attributes and boundary surfaces. 

Space missions are complex to plan, execute, and communicate to audiences with varying knowledge and interests. To retain engineering accuracy while bringing charts and strings of numbers to life, Blacknight Space’s Event Horizon uses CesiumJS for mission plans and milestones. Views seamlessly transition from Earth centric to Moon centric—and beyond—to meet the needs of complex storytelling. Read about how Blacknight Space brings real-world understanding to complicated narratives with CesiumJS. 

To retain engineering accuracy while bringing charts and strings of numbers to life, Blacknight Space’s Event Horizon uses CesiumJS for mission plans and milestones.

User Story Trailer: Blacknight Space Event Horizon

Today, we're excited to share our second major technology preview focused on design model workflows in Cesium. In June, we introduced direct Cesium ion tiling support for widely used design formats, along with the Asset Elements API for querying model metadata. Now, we are expanding what you can do with design models after they are in Cesium, from keeping models current and identifying changes between versions to precise snapping, improved clipping and insets, georeferencing, and improvements to design model 3D tileset streaming and rendering.

Built on proven Bentley technology, including the iTwin Platform and iModels, these new capabilities make it easier to bring detailed design models and geospatial data together to create interactive, performant 3D digital twins. Early adopters are already using Cesium's new features to extend existing workflows. Engineering teams are generating and evaluating multiple design options, then sharing them in Cesium's 3D geospatial context to support stakeholder engagement and collaborative design reviews. State departments of transportation are bringing information from disparate systems into a single visual canvas, enabling teams to collaborate more effectively and accelerate decision-making. 

Below we share how these latest set of features help users create powerful custom workflows for  complex design and infrastructure data with Cesium that support better collaboration and faster, informed decisions.

With the enhanced design pipeline, element properties travel with the geometry from source model to 3D Tiles.

Keep models current with continuous design updates 

Design models change through a project. Now, when a design changes, you can re-upload the updated design to Cesium ion as a new version to the existing asset. 

This reduces the manual work required to keep digital twins current as designs evolve and updating ion asset IDs. In the coming months, we'll expand continuous updates to additional data types in Cesium ion. 

In Cesium ion, a listing of the 3D Tiles versions for a BIM/CAD model. Read more about versioning design models in Cesium ion in Model versions and content updates.

Updating a model is only part of the workflow; understanding what changed between versions can be just as important. 

The new Change Detection API identifies elements that were added, removed, or modified between design updates. Developers can query those changes and isolate or zoom directly to affected elements, including elements that are internal or hidden from view. 

Instead of manually comparing entire method models, applications can surface the changes that matter.

This Sandcastle demonstrates our new change detection capabilities. It compares the latest two versions of a BIM/CAD Database model and visualizes inserted, updated, and deleted elements in CesiumJS.

Bring designs and geospatial context together with GPU-driven clipping 

Placing a design into its real-world environment often means dealing with terrain that overlaps roads, buildings, excavations, and other proposed infrastructure. 

CesiumJS now uses a GPU-driven approach to support detailed clipping polygons, including polygons with holes. Fully clipped tiles can be excluded from loading, helping maintain smooth runtime performance even with complex clipping areas. 

In the coming months, Cesium ion will also generate precise model footprints automatically, reducing the need to manually draw clipping polygons.

With new GPU-driven clipping in CesiumJS, you can precisely place designs into their real-world environment, clipping them against terrain, buildings, and other infrastructure for a seamless digital twin.

Select design elements with precise snapping 

Runtime 3D Tiles are optimized for streaming, which means they're often simplified or decimated. That's great for rendering performance, but imprecise for tasks like measurement, clash detection, or exact placement. Design review and engineering workflows need to reference the original model geometry, not an approximation of it. 

Our new snapping workflow combines client and server capabilities to query the original source geometry of your design model. This allows users to snap directly to edges, vertices, and midpoints with millimeter-level precision. By leveraging "AEC" glTF extensions for preserving information about edge visibility and other details essential to BIM/CAD models, this workflow preserves rich design semantics and supports interoperability across tools and workflows.

This same capability will provide the foundation for additional tools, such as measurements, coming in a future release.

Vertex snap on source model geometry, streamed at full precision. 

Stadium

Position models with the CRS Search API 

Getting a design model into the right place starts with the right coordinate reference system. 

The new CRS Search API in Cesium ion lets developers search for valid coordinate systems and apply them when creating or posting assets. This makes it easier to build georeferencing directly into design model workflows and confidently position models into their real-world location.

Detailed CAD and BIM models can contain more information than an application may need. Embedding unused data into 3D tilesets increases the size and reduces streaming performance. 

New ingestion content filtering lets you exclude meshes, lines, or text during ingestion. Removing unnecessary content creates lighter, more focused tilesets optimized for what your application actually needs to stream and render.

Bring CAD-Style edge display to 3D Tiles 

Engineering models often rely on crisp edges and silhouettes to make complex geometry easier to understand. In July, we announced co-authored glTF extensions EXT_mesh_primitive_edge_visibility to bring that visual language to the web. CesiumJS and Cesium for Unreal use this extension to efficiently render sharp edges while avoiding visual issues such as z-fighting. 

New design model tilesets generated by Cesium ion will include these extensions by default, enabling CAD-style edge rendering out of the box. 

CesiumJS new rendering capability supports enhanced visual clarity for engineering models on the web, enabling better understanding and inspection of complex geometry.

We're continuing to expand design model workflows in Cesium, with several new capabilities that will release in 2026: 

Automated footprint generation: Auto-calculating precise footprints in Cesium ion for easier georeferencing. 

Interactive georeferencing wizard: An intuitive UI wizard to position and orient models faster within Cesium ion. 

Advanced asset element querying API: Support for element property calculations and advanced metadata queries directly via Cesium ion API. 

Client-side model navigation: Enhanced client-side visibility filters based on model hierarchy and design model tree navigation APIs. 

Snap-to-geometry measurement tools: Measurement widgets in the Cesium ion SDK that use precise snapping to reference original source geometry for millimeter-level accuracy. 

Keep your published design models up-to-date with the latest changes! Sign up for a free Cesium ion account, upload your DWG, RVT, IFC, or DGN files, and push updates as your design evolves, with millimeter-precise snapping and change detection built in from day one.

In this month’s releases, we’re moving vector tiles, clipping polygons, design models, and asset management forward:  

This release contains our vector tiles technology preview, representing significant progress towards our implementation of 3D Tiles 2.0. You can now complete end-to-end vector workflows by uploading common vector data file formats into ion for tiling and then streaming those tiles to CesiumJS and Cesium for Unreal. Use the CesiumJS styling language to dynamically style those vectors in your applications. See our blog post for all the details. 

We’ve also improved CesiumJS clipping polygons based on similar techniques used in our vector tiles implementation. You can now create detailed clipping regions over large geographic areas. 

In the coming days, Cesium ion will introduce new capabilities for working with design models (BIM/CAD with Database), including an API to list the changes between two versions of a model. Keep an eye out for our blog post! The Cesium ion release will also include a new asset management model that separates source files from tiled assets, giving users greater control over storage usage today while laying the foundation for future capabilities, such as retiling data without reuploading source files. 

The full OpenStreetMap road network for Philadelphia, styled by road class.

CesiumJS 1.145 is now available. Highlights of the release include: 

As part of the vector tiles technology preview, added support for draping clamped vector tile polygons and polylines onto 3D Tiles, with a new heightReference option and matching read-only property on BufferPrimitiveCollection. You can now drape your vectors onto terrain and 3D Tiles. #13653

ClippingPolygons now use an algorithm, based on the techniques used for vector tiles, that vastly improves quality across distance scales. You can now clip regions of the world across multiple miles with accurate vector cutouts. Warm-up cost is also modestly decreased. #13654 

ClippingPolygons now have support for specifying holes (aka islands) within each polygon for complex clipping tasks. This works in inverse clipping workflows as well. #13660 

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