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 Japans top Visio experts, Junichi Yoda, has offered his 3D Isometric Piping shapes to download for free. Ive 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. Heres 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 - downloaded: 1552 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, hes 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:

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

Junichis 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: 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! Lets 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.

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29 Comments

Lars-Erik says: June 26, 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!

Visio Guy says: June 26, 2008 at 7:46 am So what do you think is missing, actual types of shapes more equipment or the behavior of the shapes? Whats really cool about these is how old they are. If you look at the screen shots on his site, youll see how Control Handles used to look green-fuzzy handles instead of yellow diamonds

Philippe C says: June 26, 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.

Visio Guy says: June 26, 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?

Visio Guy says: June 26, 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. Heres 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 its too much for the ShapeSheet.

Marco says: June 30, 2008 at 9:27 am hey there, i just want to know where i can get the shapes shown at the top?

Visio Guy says: June 30, 2008 at 9:42 am Hi Marco, Theres a link to the page that has the shapes in the article! - Chris

sina says: January 29, 2009 at 1:18 pm hi ,good your time i,m fitter to piping .please send .. isometric piping my email address. thank u. my email address: be_in_migan_ninash_ninash@yahoo.com

sina says: January 29, 2009 at 1:28 pm Essential!!!!!!!!!

Stefan says: February 2, 2009 at 8:30 pm 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.

Gustavo says: February 6, 2009 at 7:21 pm Ive 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.

Visio Guy says: February 16, 2009 at 9:50 am Hi Gustavo, I think that this article has the links for the iso shapes youve seen! Also, there are some posts and Visio content in these forum threads: Isometric Shapes With Shading http://visguy.com/vgforum/index.php?topic=104.0 Isometric Piping Stencils: Example Drawings http://visguy.com/vgforum/index.php?topic=638.0

Don Visio says: February 25, 2009 at 10:10 pm 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!

Rich says: March 2, 2009 at 3:11 am 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.

ChemicalJasper says: March 27, 2009 at 10:06 am 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!

Visio Guy says: March 27, 2009 at 12:00 pm 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

Visio Guy Go 3D with Free Isometric Piping Shapes for Visio | Joint Pain Relief says: June 8, 2009 at 7:32 pm [...] Visio Guy Go 3D with Free Isometric Piping Shapes for Visio Posted by root 22 minutes ago (http://www.visguy.com) The red handles in the illustration above indicate that the elbow joint is glued at both ends add your comment below or trackback from your own site Discuss | Bury | News | Visio Guy Go 3D with Free Isometric Piping Shapes for Visio [...]

Visio Guy Top Visio Guy Posts says: July 16, 2009 at 7:12 pm [...] Go 3D with Free Isometric Piping Shapes for Visio (7918) [...]

Jimmy Bell says:

August 31, 2009 at 5:29 pm Is this a 3-d program that I can use to draw plumbing isometrics. If so were can I get the download?

Visio Guy says: September 1, 2009 at 11:00 am Hi Jimmy, No Visio is a 2D program, but it features SmartShapes which can behave in interesting ways they arent 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)

Rhys Jones says: November 11, 2009 at 11:57 am 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

Visio Guy says: November 11, 2009 at 12:06 pm Hi Rhys, I just sent Junichi an e-mail, lets see if hes moved them somewhere. In the mean time, his Japan-geocities site seems to be working just fine: Cool Visio Stuff from Junichi Yoda. But the piping stuff was on regular Geocities, which I heard Is No More.

Visio Guy says: November 11, 2009 at 3:06 pm Heres the Japanese mirror site: Visio shapes and stencil for piping isometrics. Ive also edited the links in the article as well. Cheers, - Chris

ED says: November 20, 2009 at 7:43 pm Hi ! Id 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

kgipe01 says: November 25, 2009 at 9:27 pm Me too what Ed said. Site points to Geocites which isnt there anymore.

Visio Guy says: November 26, 2009 at 5:48 pm Ive found a new link that seems to work and have edited it back up in the post. Template and 2 stencils(505KB Zip File) has the shapes, a template, and also includes the isometric fonts. This page has info on installing and setting up the fonts: http://yodae.hp.infoseek.co.jp/Piping_Isometrics/English/Visio_SetUpIsometricFonts.htm

Rich says: January 7, 2010 at 3:54 pm Im having trouble with these shapesthe pipes and elbows work fine, but valves, flanges, reducers etc. dont appear on the drawing. There appears to be an object, it just doesnt look like anything. Anyone have these problems? Im using Visio 2007 Standard.

Jim says: May 23, 2010 at 10:04 pm 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 cant seem to find any of this stuff for visio. Is there anything out there you can point me to free or fee? Thanks.

vahid says: October 31, 2010 at 8:01 am

Hi, would you plz tell me where to find free visio shapes for water treatment?