Visio Guy 
Go 3D with Free Isometric Piping Shapes for Visio
Posted by Visio Guy on June 25th, 2008 2330 views
Attention process engineers!
Calling all techies who work in:
- Oil refineries
- Water treatment facilities
- Any plant that produces a product in liquid form!
For years one of Japan’s top Visio experts, Junichi Yoda, has offered his 3D Isometric Piping shapes to download for free. I’ve long loved these shapes (having studied mechanical engineering myself), and have put off far showcasing them on Visio Guy for far, far too long!
Sample Piping System Included
Yoda includes a sample drawing that you can download and play with, to get a feel for how the shapes should be used:
Shapes for Every Perspective
The stencil contains 74 action-packed shapes. Here’s a look at what you get:
Valves, Reducers and Expanders
S and L Joints
Other Isometric Goodies
You can download these wonderful shapes here:
Visio Shapes and Stencil for Piping Isometrics by Junichi Yoda
Cool Extras
In addition to the piping shapes, he’s included some nifty isometric cube shapes. The samples below were all made from one master, simply by dragging on the control handles.
Similarly, the isometric cylinder shape can take numerous forms:
He’s also included dimension lines so that you can add scale and measurements to your isometric piping diagrams:
Junichi’s web site includes isometric fonts that you can download for free, along with complete instructions on how to get them to work with the piping shapes:
- How to Install Isometric Fonts
- How to Set Up Isometric Fonts for Isometric Dimensions
- How to Use Dimensions
Ease of Use
By gluing joint-shapes to valves, you can easily reposition the shapes, without worrying about re-drawing the piping.
The red handles in the illustration above indicate that the elbow joint is glued at both ends to the valves. When the valves are moved, the joint follows along!
Let's all give Junichi Yoda a big round of applause, and a heart-felt Thank You for creating this cool set of shapes!
June 26th, 2008 at 5:34 am
Working on a piping template / shapes myself I came across these a while ago.
There nice indeed, though for real piping drawing I feel they might be a bit limited as far as shapes go.
If you have a simple drawing, you can make some amazing drawings to show of during presentations etc. thats for sure!
June 26th, 2008 at 7:46 am
So what do you think is missing, actual types of shapes — more equipment — or the behavior of the shapes?
What’s really cool about these is how old they are. If you look at the screen shots on his site, you’ll see how Control Handles used to look - green-fuzzy handles instead of yellow diamonds
June 26th, 2008 at 9:40 am
Your endorsment made me give it another try. The instructions are hard to understand. And two years ago I was not so good in Visio.
I am a plumber, and I must say there is a lot missing. Like a motor, a three-way valve. If anyone is interested, I can look what shapes would be needed compared to the European drawing regulations.
I even think that Isometric drawing would merit a chapter in the forum.
Well, yes, I left that good old religion (the Microsoft forum) for a better one with attachments.
June 26th, 2008 at 10:03 am
Thanks for the comments Philippe!
There was some discussion in the forum about isometric shapes, so I wanted to show people what could be done with Visio.
I wonder how many people in the world could use a full set of shapes for isometric piping? And how many of them would much rather do their layouts in Visio?
June 26th, 2008 at 11:27 am
Notes for the future:
1. The symbol count could probably be reduced by allowing right-click Actions to flip in various directions. At the time of creation, this was only possible via double-clicking. (The dimensions lines do indeed flip when you double-click them!)
2. Here’s a nice set of symbols, for reference: Isometric Piping Symbols”
3. Add-on code could provide a nicer selection interface for choosing views. For instance, an elbow-joint could have twelve views, which might be a bit unwieldy for the right-click menu. Code could also help with the font setup and selection, if it’s too much for the ShapeSheet.
June 30th, 2008 at 9:27 am
hey there, i just want to know where i can get the shapes shown at the top?
June 30th, 2008 at 9:42 am
Hi Marco,
There’s a link to the page that has the shapes in the article!
- Chris