- Enter 3D in the search box. This search returns only shapes that have the term “3D” in their name, so the results might not be a complete list. To find 3D shapes and stencils online, search the Microsoft Download Center for Visio shapes. Some people and companies outside of Microsoft are also creating 3D shapes.
- Professor Robert McMillen shows you how to add and work with 3D Shapes in Visio 2019.
- Are there any 3D modeling add-ons that can take a 2D visio diagram and create a 3D model? This thread is locked. You can follow the question or vote as helpful, but you cannot reply to this thread.
- Custom Visio 2013 or later template that allows you to easily create 3d isometric blueprints that USED TO BE shown at The style h.
Hi Juliette, To get a 3D view in Visio 2016 sheet, 3D Visioner is a good tool to achieve that. As the draws may have compatibility issue with the 3D Visioner 2017, you need the previous 3D Visioner and you can get it as a standalone application from this link.
In our last post I discussed 1D Visio shapes and their powerful connection features that ease the task of creating drawings of objects assembled into systems. In this article I’ll describe a variation of 2D Visio shapes that are drawn to look like 3D views.
Visio includes in the box several stencils with objects drawn in an isometric style. Wikipedia has an excellent overview of the isometric projection technique if you are interested. The appeal of isometric is that it’s much easier to draw than perspective since distance of the object from the eye is not considered. An object at the front of a room drawn in isometric will be the same size as an identical object located at the back of the room but the view shows 3 dimensions.
Microsoft Visio 3d Drawing Software
The adjacent illustration shows the angles of the Isometric X and Y axes with the Z axis pointing up. The illustration has no scale… the objects are samples from Visio and Visimation stencils drawn in isometric simply to show a variety. In a similar style, we created a custom set of scaled isometric shapes for Tripp Lite products including equipment racks, enclosures, power strips, and power distribution units. A sample is at the top of this page. These stencils are available for free download from ShapeSource.com.
In a future article I’ll cover the differences in behavior of the various types of Visio connection points for 1D and 2D glue that can ease the process of assembling a set of parts. I previously discussed 1D glue for mounting devices in racks, for example, and we’ll revisit that here as we place devices into the enclosed racks in a simulated 3D isometric view.
Since Visio is a 2D system, it has no way of knowing that an object is physically contained by another object in 3D space. We need to trick these shapes into showing the devices inside of the enclosure.
Visimation custom Tripp Lite isometric assembly technique
The following steps correspond to the numbers in the image above:
Ms Visio 3d Drawing
- Drop an enclosure on the page (part SR42UB from the Tripp Lite Isometric stencil)
- Drag a device (in this case a PDU) and drop it in the enclosure.
- Note the dark box that appears around the enclosure. This signals that the enclosure shape is a group that will accept dropped shapes into it which is a setting in the Format > Behavior dialog box.
- For this to work, the dropped shape must also have a special behavior set, “Add shape to groups on drop”, in the same Behavior dialog box. The shapes in this stencil have been preset with these options.
- If you zoom in closely you can move the PDU until it’s snapped into the rack with 1D glue. Visio can be a bit finicky under these conditions so zoom in close to see the shape handles and the red glue indicators.
- The PDU is now in the group but the side panel of the enclosure is beneath the PDU shape so the PDU does not look like it’s inside the enclosure
- Right click on the side panel and select Shape > Bring to front.
- The side panel now covers the PDU and the PDU appears to be within the enclosure. Note that the enclosure is a group that’s structured so that when you click on the side panel, that portion of the enclosure comes to the “front” while leaving the remainder of the enclosure “behind” the PDU.
At the right is a close-up of the PDU before and after the enclosure side was brought forward. You’ll need to work with these shapes a little to understand how to manipulate them to achieve the desired 3D results. Of course, this is only a problem when you are trying to place an object within the 3D envelope of another object. It’s much easier to work with the free standing racks and enclosures and especially (on the Tripp Lite isometric stencil) the SRCOOL12K cooling unit and the SU20K3/3 power unit. With these objects, the last one dropped will always be “on top”. If you move objects around you may need to bring certain ones forward with right click menu I mentioned above or the Shape > Order menu from the main menu bar.
I hope this brings the subject of Visio 3D simulation a bit more into <ahem>… perspective.
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