Piping Piping and More piping

[William_IV]

Hello Visio professionals

I thought I'd try Visio2013 for piping estimating and detailing small projects.  Normally I detail a project by hand sketching and listing piping valves and components.  I'm faster by hand but then usually do double the work putting everything into a spreadsheet and then scanning field drawings ordering parts and starting the project.  I am struggling through this to get Visio to be a quicker and easier working tool, for my type of work.

I have 2013 standard and when I loaded the program there are no shapes in the p&ID template bummer! I had lots of shapes in the MS trial version, like tanks vessels pumps etc. but i gather they give you everything for the trial. 

If anyone can point me to resources where i can find shapes, I need to create a template sheet as well, with title blocks material listing blocks etc.
I did try Junichi’s web site and downloaded his isometric shapes, looks promising... i just haven't had the time to properly evaluate if this will be something i can do faster than sketching.

Thanks for any help in advance!

WM

[Yacine]

Hi William,
just some thoughts about the subject:
- There's no perfect solution, being all together the fastest, the most accurate and the better to handle.
- Junichi's isometric shapes are the fastest way to draw isometrics
- If you don't need pipe lengths and accurate numbers of bends, then you may look at the P&ID solution from Visio (professional).
- Biggest time savings will be realised be setting up a database based configurator for components. Chosing the components is much more time consuming than the drawing itself.
- You could model your pipework in 3D and create from these models isometrics and bill of materials, but that is very expensive and quite slow.

And last but not least, draw your own shapes, that's faster.

Cheers, Yacine.