Areas are for holding logical groupings of control strategies. They are not class based and do not share common properties since areas by themselves do not have properties. However, areas in your batch system are used to contain process cells, which in turn contain all of the equipment for a production of a batch.
Process cells provide a way to organize equipment in a batch system. A process cell is a logical grouping of unit modules, equipment modules, and control modules that control all the equipment required for production of a batch. Process cells are class based in that process cells within a single class share common properties. Process cell classes are defined in the Advanced Definitions section of the DeltaV Explorer Library. They can be grouped into categories for further organization. In our simple paint system, we will leave the process cell class category as General and create a single process cell class named PRODUCTION.
In the System Configuration section of the DeltaV Explorer we will create an area named EXTERIOR_PAINT that will hold a process cell named PAINT_BLEND, based on the process cell class PRODUCTION.