Areais a closed region formed by one or more boundaries having an associated centroid inside the region. An area may carry a database linkage and may be created from a MicroStation shape element (see Creating shapes). Shape elements do not require centroids since they can serve as a single point of reference for a database linkage.

When choosing the element type to represent area data (boundaries and centroids vs. shapes), there are several points to keep in mind. Areas entered and maintained as boundaries and centroids will always work with topology analysis and maintaining common edges between areas is greatly simplified. Boundaries and centroids need to be converted into shapes before they can be used in thematic mapping. This avoids the conversion process necessary to resymbolize boundaries and centroids in thematics.