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Go 3D with Free Isometric Piping Shapes for Visio

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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:

sample-isometric-piping-drawing

Shapes for Every Perspective

The stencil contains 74 action-packed shapes. Here’s a look at what you get:

isometric-valves

Valves, Reducers and Expanders

isometric-joints

S and L Joints

isometric-shapes

Other Isometric Goodies

You can download these wonderful shapes here:

Edit: 2021.06.25 Junichi’s website is no longer active. We haven’t heard from him on the forum for several years and assume he’s retired from Visio. He is dearly missed. The links here and below have been removed. I’ve zipped everything I could find and placed it for download at the end of the article.

Edit: 2009.11.11 link updated to Japanese mirror site, as the old Geocities link was broken or gone.

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.

isometric-cube-shape

Similarly, the isometric cylinder shape can take numerous forms:

isometric-cylinder-shape

He’s also included dimension lines so that you can add scale and measurements to your isometric piping diagrams:

isometric-fonts

 

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

Edit: 2021.06.25 these links were removed, as explained previously.

Edit: 2009.11.11 link updated to Japanese mirror site, as the old Geocities links were broken or gone.

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!

Edit: 2009.01.13 – Stefan, one of our Visio Guy forum members, submitted some fantastic Visio sample drawings that use these isometric piping Visio shapes. Have a look at this newsgroup post.

 

Download “3D Isometric Piping Shapes” s!Aj0wJuswNyXliBo-NJpa6URXriHp – Downloaded 45119 times –

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  3. Visio Circle Arrows 2013

Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. Working on a piping template / shapes myself I came across these a while ago.
    They’re 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 off during presentations etc. that’s for sure!

  2. 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 🙂

  3. 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.

  4. 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?

  5. 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.

  10. I have been using these shapes for years and have made some additions where required ie slip-plates, pumps. What I have found is how flexible they are.
    For me they are ace and one of the most useful stencils conceived.

  11. I’ve seen some examples of iso drawings in your website and wonder where can i get some of the process equipment and accessories used on those drawings. Can you point me in the right direction? Thanks.

  13. There are more application for Isometric piping that you might think…

    I have tons of plan view plumbing schematics… the detail provided from a Visio drawing is something that the guys constructing it have never seen & amazingly, it reduces their time on the job.

    Is there the ability to draw in plan view, assign depth, and then have a 3d/iso drawing rendered?

    VG, gimme sumthing like DAT!

  14. imagine taking this to a network diagram –
    In my case I have a data broker system with data feeds in, out, various translations (JMS topics, MQ msg, SFTP and web services, firewalls (from your PDF think a translucent verticl wall), VPN tunnels (literally), multiple servers etc – gonna have some fun making this come to fruition…..if I can.

  15. This may be a daft question but how do I scale these?

    They are great but when I select all the shapes and try to fit it to a page, the lines re size, but the shapes do not. I am using Visio 2003 and have looked at loads of setting and cannot figure it out!?!?!?

    Please help so I can used this great tool!

  16. CJ,

    Sometimes the intelligence built in to Visio shapes that makes them easier to use makes them harder to scale. It might be better if you play with the paper size. You can make the page bigger, but then “fit to 1 page” when you print.

    Hope this gives you some ideas,

    Chris

  17. Is this a 3-d program that I can use to draw plumbing isometrics. If so were can I get the download?

  18. Hi Jimmy,

    No Visio is a 2D program, but it features “SmartShapes” which can behave in interesting ways – they aren’t just symbol libraries of dumb clip-art.

    Junichi Yoda built a clever set of Visio SmartShapes that make creating isometric piping diagrams easier (in a 2D program).

    You have to have Microsoft Visio to use the shapes. You can probably use these shapes with versions as old as Visio 2000. (Current version is Visio 2007)

  19. Hi

    Does anybody have the Junichi Yoda pack that they could email me (or contact details for him?) as the website is no longer available…

    I really need isometric ellipses if possible as smart shapes in all three planes…

  22. Hi !

    I’d love to get a copy of the piping sheds. Any chance somebody could email this ? The japanese mirror site is redirected to geocities which is no longer available

  25. I’m having trouble with these shapes…the pipes and elbows work fine, but valves, flanges, reducers etc. don’t appear on the drawing. There appears to be an object, it just doesn’t look like anything. Anyone have these problems? I’m using Visio 2007 Standard.

  26. I am looking for municipal water line pipe template shapes, valves, elbows, flange fittings etc… Anyone who designs or installs these type of projects would understand what I am looking for. I just can’t seem to find any of this stuff for visio. Is there anything out there you can point me to free or fee? Thanks.

  31. Hello Visio Guy,
    I just downloaded the Isometric piping shapes. Most of the shapes are working fine, however, when I try to edit the fill of the variable rectangle or square I get the following error. “An error (1) occurred during the action Fill Properties. Unexpected end of File.” The cylinders are working fine.

    Any idea what would cause this?

    Thanks
    Mike

  32. Hi Mike,

    No idea what’s causing this. I think those shapes were created in Visio 3.0, so maybe they’re starting to get weird.

    You can edit each face by sub-selecting shapes, however. These shapes are groups and have several sub-shapes inside. When the sub-shapes are selected, they have their outlines turned off, so the user-experience is odd, but it works.

    1. Select a Variable Rectangle shape.
    2. Click again on one of the faces. All handles disappear, but you’ve sub-selected a shape.
    3. Select a new fill color. Just the face that you clicked on changes.
    4. Click a blank area of the page, then click the shape again to select the whole group.

    Cheers,

    Chris

  34. Sorry, but I can not find the link on the japanese website to download and install the isometric fonts package. Can anybody help me, please!

    Many thanks in advance.

    Greeting from Hamburg (Germany),
    Marcus

  35. Servus Marcus!

    I found the fonts by doing this.

    1. Click link in article above.
    2. Click “Piping Isometrics / Free Download”
    3. There is a table on the page. Look for: “With Slant Fonts for Visio2000 and 2002 and Continuous Numbers”. There is a large zip to download: “Template and 2 stencils(434KB Zip File)”. This contains the isometric fonts.

    Cheers,

    Chris

  40. I’m a dork. I used Visio a while back and remember double clicking to add labels. Not sure if this is true, but I remembered it that way. I just realized you just select the shape and type. There never was a problem. Cool stencils!

  41. Hi Rob,

    A lot of shapes have double-click to edit text, but it’s not 100%. You can even set it for shapes using the Format > Behavior dialog.

    Of course, select-and-type works too, as you’ve discovered. But if you want to edit existing text, this doesn’t work, since it overwrites everything. In that case, I hit F2 to get into text-edit mode. The Text tool does the same thing, but I find F2 to be faster.

  42. Hello all,

    I was wondering if anyone is having any trouble with the dimension stencils, namely the fonts changing from the isometric fonts?

    For some reason, the fonts change when I place the stencil in the drawing. I have reinstalled the IsomeLeft, IsomeRight, and Protest TTF files, but cannot get Visio to utilize them. They do work within other Office applications (Word, Excel).

    I am using Visio 2007, with Yoda’s stencils.

    Any help would be appreciated.

  43. Hi,
    Ive been using these iso shapes for quite a while and find them very useful. However sometimes I need to re-size these shapes as can be done in Visio itself.
    Any advise on how to do it would be appreciated.
    Thanks

  44. The stencils have the isometric angles but are not rounded like they are in the sample drawing. I made a new stencil based of the sample. Now if somebody can make actual pipes (like emt) then we’d be cooking.

  46. Hey Guys
    What an awesome creation or would be if i could get it! – for some reason my computer won’t let me access the download site! 🙁
    Would it be possible to forward the files to me by email please?
    to jonp8xg@gmail.com
    many thanks

  47. please help. the pipe and elbows are showing up fine but the valves and flanges are so tiny that you can’t even see them when zoomed to
    %400. what do you think is wrong?

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