Because designs can be printed at any scale, the one design can be used in a number of drawings. For example, the one design may be used in an overall plan at 1:100 and parts of it in other views or details at 1:10, 1:20, and 1:50. With manual drafting, each view or detail has to be drawn separately. With MicroStation, however, you need only draw the design once. It then can be used any number of times, referenced to other files at various scales, either in its entirety or just a portion of it, and printed.

For this reason, planning is required to produce finished drawings with borders. Take text placement, for example. If you place text elements in the design and it is scaled, then the text elements also will be scaled.

With manual drafting, you scaled your design to fit the border. MicroStation lets you use this same technique, via scaled references. Alternatively, you can scale your border to fit the design.