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Ask Slashdot: Recommendations For Beautiful Network Cable Trays?
First time accepted submitter murpht2 writes "My company prides itself on an office environment that follows a modern design aesthetic: open floor plan, bold colors on the walls, cool lamps in the corners. We're now engaged in a significant upgrade to our IT systems and we have a clash: the IT team leader wants to run network cable in trays hanging from the ceiling so all the client computers have high-speed access to the new servers; the guy in charge of the office design wants to keep things looking clean and the cable trays don't fit the bill. We're in a building made entirely of bricks and concrete, so we lack some of the between-the-wall spaces that are used in other settings. Any suggestions for beautiful cable trays or other alternatives?"
My company prides itself on an office environment that follows a modern design aesthetic: open floor plan, bold colors on the walls, cool lamps in the corners.
My lame company only prides itself on stupid shit like making good products and pleasing its customers.
The cow says "Moo." The dog says "Woof." The Timothy says "Thanks, valued customer. We appreciate your input."
the guy in charge of the office will love it, no wires. very pretty
If it's a small office, you can use Ethernet over power lines. I have not used it before, but it seems to be what you are looking for.
That being said, it's difficult to give up the 1000 Mb connections from modern ethernet cables, along with POE for phones, etc. The designer by not putting ethernet cables in place did your business a disservice. A secure business requires secure ethernet.
Hoist Number One and Number Six.
He can give you what you want. (or if you wan't high tech, a CNC shop)
Buy typical cable trays, and 3D print some sort of fancy colorful casings for them. You can use a variety of designs and colors for aesthetic appeal. Plus even if it doesn't look all that great it will still be "cutting edge" technology in use, which will likely appeal to your business folks. Plus you can throw a 3D printer in your budget...
Problem : bricks and concrete does not fit cable tray ;)
Solution : build a cable tray in brick and concrete!
Now gives me 1000$ in consultation fees
If you want aesthetics, go wireless. 802.11ac is probably much faster than your internet connection which is all most people care about.
I might not bother trying to find beautiful trays, but instead find regular ones, then decorate!
Take something like this: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B003AU3HG6?ie=UTF8&camp=213733&creative=393185&creativeASIN=B003AU3HG6&linkCode=shr&tag=preinheimerco-20&qid=1386087250&sr=8-5&keywords=wire+tray
Then put these underneath: http://www.whatisblik.com/shop/explore?theme=77
Turn your office ceiling into a pacman arena!
paul reinheimer
Did this same person complain over the HVAC system? The only way I'm aware of to get away from seeing cable trays is false floor or false ceiling. If you don't have that option, your only choice is to try to make the cable trays "pretty", which is more or less making it look like the HVAC with large metal trays... it's up to you if you want solid or mesh, and you could probably paint them... You could also get creative with panduit for running down support beams or walls, just integrate the colors and make sure the panduit is thick enough to accomodate more than you currently have, running new wire is a pain in the ass.
use ceiling plates to cover the cabling, also probably might dampen the accoustics in your office
- I choked on the red pill and now I'm stuck in limbo
Not much difference in ceiling mounted cable tray, In my personal opinion cage trays with bright uniform colored cable look fine in the more open modern office spaces, just don't use gray or otherwise dull cable and it wont matter too much ( so long as you comb the runs out so they look half neat)
Use brightly colored cables, get metal cable tray and rattle can spray paint it a contrasting color. I've seen it done very well, and it does add a near technical feel to a space.
Any interior designer could help you; if you're going for image, then that's probably not a bad idea anyway.
If you're not going for image.. drop tile. :)
..don't panic
They're both right: The network guy about trays being a great solution, and the office designer about trays being butt-ugly.
However, why not work some type of panelling below, rising to the sides of the trays? I'm not a designer by far, but is seems to me that
hiding the trays cannot be exceptionally difficult, and can be done with much freedom of style. And all of that should be open from the top,
and far enough from the ceiling to keep easy access.
Next, the cables coming down. The covering should accomodate cabledrops without these having to "spill over", and in a way that keeps them very accessible. simple holes? Also, the cables themselves could be surrounded by some spiral or other form, lending them style and possibly even some strength. The spiral could even be strung between the casing and the desk, making it an active element of design, rather than a trick to 'hide the ugly cable'.
the panelings could be cut/painted in a themes shape/color, of be kept elegantly simple, depending on the design of the surrounding office.
-f
Is this a tray requiring 100s of connections or 10? Is this in an office environment, or the datacenter? How much time and money do you want to waste, I mean spend, on this?
Either way, take a standard metal lattice cable tray and get it in black. More importantly, make sure the cables are laid out neatly, as in if they all fit on the bottom of the tray, keep them on the bottom, not piled up on each other.
Use fiber trays instead. These are typically troughs. CNC some designs in them and install LEDs inside.
Design to take power and cat5 in separate bays + sockets for all, available widely.
Time for bed, said Zebedee - boing
You do have office pets, right? Just give them a collar with clips that hold SD cards, then train them to go to the server room and fill up the cards with data and return them to you.
Latency is a little high, but bandwidth can be pretty good - as they say, never underestimate the bandwidth of a Golden Retriever with a collar full of SD cards.
I have seen some people run white UPVC pipes in suspension along a large open room with a drop pipe to each desk, if fitted well and hung with strong tin cables looks quite good. the verticals vanish in to the top of the desks.
Most places just waste the space above ceilings (and below floors). You're not using brick ceilings, are you?
If you have fluorescent lights, just lay your cables over that. Just make sure that you are using non-plenum cabling.
* Obligatory serious note: make sure to research these ideas before implementing anything in the second paragraph!
Some years ago when I moved my company into a new office and wanted to keep the cost down, I installed rain gutters (and occasional downspout) on the walls inside to run telephone and ethernet. It was inexpensive compared to official cable trays and hid the wiring nicely.
Gutters are standard architectural details and since they are very visible you can find nice looking designs and colors.
I don't read your sig. Why are you reading mine?
Two men enter one man leaves!! And it's entertaining for the rest of the company.
Using rigid (or PVC) conduit as a raceway for your cables, paint them any color you like. Paint the walls a dark gray charcoal and data conduits bright orange.. everything exposed (ductwork, conduit) and use industrial surface mount boxes for the data jacks (with a black wall-plate).
Looks bad-ass.
Expensive as hell.
Simple: Ditch the servers and move to cloud. Then fire all your IT staff and replace them with contractors from India.
1. No need to work about the aesthetics of the server room.
2. Your office will now have additional space with the removal of all that ugly looking IT equipment.
3. Your managers will no longer have to listen to petty arguments by the IT workers.
4. You company will save money by hiring cheap IT workers from India.
Its a WIN-WIN situation for everyone!
... and do something similar.
If it's not too late, consider a timber raised floor. This should also allow you to hide the power cabling.
brightly coloured, thin metal/plastic pipes. Cheap & effective.
And look for existing tray products. In spite of some of the ideas proposed for custom made trays keep this in mind: the electrical/fire code in your jurisdiction probably will insist on the trays being "listed" for the intended purpose. Anything else may require some sort of engineering sign off and UL certification. You don't even want to know what that will cost.
Sure, it seems like a pretty trivial issue. But if your inspector throws a fit, you are screwed.
Have gnu, will travel.
You can get really nice industrial cable trays. Mount them high enough that they aren't immediately noticeable but they maintain that industrial and exposed look.
The good ones are powder coated so you can get a colour of your choice to match the office.
Use a tool called a cable comb when you are running the cables to put the cables into very straight and neat bundles.
Here is the manufacturer of a good quality system for cable trays:
http://wiremaidusa.com/
(they have many resellers. Your cabling contractor likely deals with a supplier who can get this)
Here is the cable comb tool for making straightened bundles of cables that look neat in they tray:
http://www.acomtools.com/
If you want something more enclosed then you can go to full conduit installation using metal pipes. The pipes can then be painted to match your ceiling colour.
Here: http://in105966439.trustpass.alibaba.com/product/116155145-101307025/Powder_coated_cable_trays.html
"My company prides itself on an office environment that follows a modern design aesthetic: open floor plan, bold colors on the walls, cool lamps in the corners."
I'm happy for you that your office is pretty. But where do you go when you need to stop "collaborating" and get some actual work done? Or when the group at the bench across from yours is "collaborating" so loudly that your group can't hear each other talk?
Open floor plans may be great for some jobs, but they are poison for work that requires concentration, especially when that work also entails remote collaboration. If you find this isn't true, I'd like to hear more -- especially about how you handle conference-call participation when there's a loud discussion nearby.
(Yeah, I know I'll take an "off-topic" hit to my karma for this. Sorry; it's a hot button at the moment.)
http://www.middleatlantic.com/dcm/equip/cladders.htm
I assume a cable hangs from the tray to the desktop? I suggest adding some climbing vines, with pots, so it looks natural. You can also add a few spider monkeys to go up and down the cables, and their poop will fertilize the vines after you scrape it off everything??
The basic problem with trays is the cable from tray to desk.
If you used a dropped ceiling (aka ceiling plates), you could have a high BW bidirectional infra-red network from overhead to desk. In fact, with a few bidirectional emitters you might cover the office very well with even less intrusion, http://www.fraunhofer.de/en/press/research-news/2012/october/wireless-data-at-top-speed.html
With IR reflectivity on all surfaces, coverage will come easy. The surface could look different at visible wavelengths for aesthetic reasons.
Why are you even in a physical building? You need to cloud, NOW.
Use Schedule 80 PVC conduit, or metal if you like. It's easy, comes in lots of sizes, and creates an industrial look without exposed wires. I did this in an office and then used Levitron Quickport plates and connectors on the client end. The customer was pretty happy.
Be a man, use minimal cable trays, and tie the cables yourself. Tons of color coded cables is beautiful too. /r/cableporn imo
"My company prides itself on an office environment that follows a modern design aesthetic..."
How about producing a valuable product? If this is what's driving the latest office war, your company's priorities are farked up.
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
We've been happy with our B-line FlexTray system running in our datacenter. It was easy to install, looks nice, and wasn't terribly expensive.
You might want to get some inspiration from reddit / imgur cableporn sections.
I have discovered a truly marvelous proof of killer sig, which this margin is too narrow to contain.
http://www.screwfix.com/p/square-line-gutter-114mm-white-pack-of-6/16271
It's cheap, durable, hides the cables perfectly, is available in three colors (Black, grey, white), cuts to length and can be easily decorated.
Using directed antennas attached to decent APs will ensure clients are connecting to the closest AP and reduce interference from omni-directional antennas spewing the signal everywhere. Attach flat-panel antennas to the ceiling pointing down over each cluster of workspaces.
Use standard cable trays.. but spray paint them some hip color that works with your designer... gold, silver, metallic blue, or whatever.. Lots of great colors to choose from. Will look great.. and be functional. And you won't spend a fortune. Guaranteed its the cheapest, most sensible solution. Don't forget to color coordinate with your CAT6.
Fire the guy in charge of the building design. Bold colours don't lend themselves well to a soothing environment and he's pushing looks over functionality.
Just run the cables along the roof like any normal socially functional people. Run additional cable so you can hang your office designer, proudly displayed. Should be good for morale too.
Get regular trays, hire the CEOs trendy artsy friend (they can afford this because of how much pride they put into office design) to come in and paint some cool abstract design on them (even get more super cool by asking the people around the office for ideas on what to paint, even custom designs near their desks for that extra pretentious look to match their black rim glasses) and bam, you got what you want.
A: Live, nude women.
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
Long back in a aeronautical facility (in India) I was surprised by the presence of toilet plungers in the corners of many rooms. When I asked one of the technicians he said, they are used to create the suction needed to pull up any tile on the floor, to access the crawl space below. Instead of providing trap doors at a few locations to get to the crawl space, these guys pull up any tile anywhere on the floor, reach in and grab the cables!
In USA if some one would make carpets or under-carpet padding that can accommodate cables without making the surface uneven on top, it would make a killing. Quick someone patent this.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
I've been wanting to put several of those programmable LED strip lights above the cable trays. Some of them can be programmed to any color you like AND can show motion. Sorta like the airport tunnel light sculptures.
But wouldn't it look cool to have multiple colored light "packets" running inbound and outbound? You could even alter the rate to match your actual loading. I bet no one would notice the ugly racks.
I would suggest proposing that the trays be made out of hollowed out exotic rain forest hard wood, new growth only naturally. Travel to Costa Rica and look for a cheap piece of retirement property while you are there or time a trip to Brazil during Carnival and get your tubes cleaned.
Never let a good interior decorating crisis go to waste!
I don't know, if I was looking for aesthetics, I would probably go for ladder rack.
I doubt that he needs the typical use of high weight limits, but it does make IXCs look impressive as compared to basket racks.
Depends on how many connections you need, but hiding flat cable under the carpet can be a viable option.
http://www.vpi.us/cable-sf-cat6.html
Then again, the poster doesn't specify whether this office has carpet.
The speed of time is one second per second.
Paste to floor and you get StumbleUpon, Sticky Notes and Pastebin for free!
Having some aesthetic taste does not mean that someone is gay.
How are they going to power all this equipment? Obviously they are going to have to put in power drops everywhere to power up all those handy devices, cell phone chargers, computers, laptops and printers, so just do the same thing for your network they are planning to do for the power.
You want to plan for at least one network drop for *every* power outlet they put in, plus put in two everyplace you currently plan to put desks. The two (network and power) do not go in the same conduit or cable ways by code, but I'd suggest you simply use the SAME thing you use for power, for network wires. Just dump all the network wires into a closet (hopefully separate from the breaker box) and terminate them into patch bays there.
DON'T: Try the WiFi thing for more than a small handful of devices. If you have to start using your toes to count the devices only an access point, it's going to start struggling with keeping up and I'm counting smart phones and laptops here. If you start doing any serious data transfers you can swamp a WiFi connection with ONE device.
DON'T: Put in network wiring that is not easily replaced. Where it is not likely you will outgrow Cat-5, technology may advance in ways where you would like to have other kinds of wiring in the future. Make sure to leave space in conduit to allow pulling more drops, or changing cabling types (I suggest not more than half full).
Personally, I'd go with the "steam punk" look in your case. This uses very industrial looking stuff, iron sheets, rivets and such. I'm guessing you could find some wrought iron company to make some cool looking cable ways or trays that would be the steam punk style. Then you can choose to go with wiring colors that are either bold or muted for your network infrastructure. If you want to emphasize your "We are technology!" image, go with bold colored Cat-5 and make sure it shows using open cable trays. Or if you want to look established, go with totally covered wire-ways and muted colors.
Of course, this isn't cheap... But if the primary factor is "cheap", buy a couple of rolls of Velcro and duct tape...
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
My office has exposed cable trays. Some of the length has a toy model train running through it. Perhaps you can leave the exposed cable runs but spice it up with toy trains and hamster tubes?
Do you have electricity for the computers to use? If so, someone was once able to install wiring. Call that guy to install network wiring.
It was good enough in my day... :)
"Helping to keep you two steps ahead of the Thought Police!"
suggested Powerline Ethernet yet?
Just make use of infrastructure you already have in place. The adapters can be a bit expensive since the cheaper ones are meh on bandwidth, but I think it's the best balance between WiFi's anti-clutter and Ethernet's speed.
And everybody wins.
Cablofil is beautiful and very easy to work with.
Either color-code the cables and bind them very nicely together, or color-code some pipes/conduit and run the cables through those.
Make it look like Google's data centers. Wires or pipes.
500mb Powerline adapters. I am assuming you already have power in conduit on the walls...
Use regular cable trays but cover the bottom/sides with peel-and-stick brick wallpaper/contact paper Sounds stupid but just might work -- cheap too..
False floor. Solved.
Get Cable Ladders rather than the wire trays. They are larger, but actually that would make them easier to paint. Paint them to match (or contrast) with the walls and ceilings they are mounted to. Get Cat6 that is colored, again to contrast or match the color. Neatly cable lace the cables to the ladder (to avoid the rats nest look). They don't disappear, but they will look better than the standard rats nest in metal wire look of most trays.
I've always found colored conduit has a nice aesthetic and technical appeal while being functional, 10gbit fiber in blue, 1gbit copper in red, etc.
You can even get metal conduit with "tinting" (Colored transparency plastic coating) that looks very modern.
Setup hanging plants and use it to conceal the cables. Use some sort of pillar vine to bring large clusters of cables down to the floor.
If looks are important why not make the tray look like (and carry) a novelty train on top? Remember that those are electric motors (probably DC with lots of noise when running) and stage the cable not directly adjacent to the tracks, but that's fine if you have some kind of support 'box' beneath the train. The cables can go on the bottom and the train on top.
Your job is to cable the place. HIS job is to make it look pretty. Use your cable risers and whatnot, then let HIM come in behind you and put trays and whatnot over it, paint them and make the ceiling into a piece of design/artwork.
You are both failing at this by arguing over it. For you its a necessary task to make the business function, for him, its another opportunity to flex his design skills. He's being lazy by demanding you do his job here.
Seriously. Show him your layout for it, then let him tell design around it, tell you what he needs in colors, and you order your cat5/6 to need. It comes in every color you could want. Paint your trays or custom order them. But stop trying to do his job for him, and stop letting him make your job harder.
Multiple people already mentioned as an aside, but since I work to NFPA specs I'll put it right in the title. You do *not* want to spend a lot of money and then have your insurance guy or the fire marshal wander through for inspection and tell you to rip it all down.
... and being gay does not mean someone has some aesthetic taste.
(sorry, just wanted both the inverse and converse represented). The trolling A/C is a loser. I really like the submitter's question, not because I particularly care about cable trays but because it shows that she or he is the opposite of the BOFH: asking how to fit the various users' needs rather than forcing people to just put up with what IT wants to give 'em.
Yup. My wife ain't gay, and she's got great aesthetic taste. Or so I'm told.
Just have the contractor put a visual barrier around them to satisfy the "that looks icky" people. thin wood box painted the color of the wall it is near or the ceiling color.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
You mentioned high-speed but that doesn't sound like all of it. Perhaps ease of configuration/maintenance, reliability, cost, , etc. In a data center or computer lab, cable trays typically make sense. In a general office environment, large trays are usually not run across rooms in plain sight as the "network guy" probably would/should want them out of sight and more protected than just a tray. Usually it's drop ceiling here which I prefer as open ceilings get cluttered and dusty and leave many things unprotected. I have seen cable trays which were lined with nice wood before and were made as part the room's design. Also, depending on your electrical code they may be able to be run under the floor (either with a raised foor, or conduit, or something similar.
You could consider fiber instead of copper which potentially could reduce the amount of cables (and size of the trays/conduit/etc) along with the proper configuration and devices.
The concern about speed is changing as some dense offices are moving towards thin clients. I have always like the terminals that run off a single POE cable and include voip (typically small screens though).
Bamboo can be split to make cable raceways and keep with the chinese restuarant feel most of your employees will be used to. I also suggest some fu dogs at the front and paying ludicrous amounts of money for a feng shui expert to come in and ensure the place is up to code.
do it right. go all the way. if you want to SEE brick walls and SEE naked cement surfaces, ... it's not just trays!
then show the water pipes and !electrical wiring! and the network too!
i think a major overhaul is needed
I guess I may have misunderstood, but I thought this was an office. Don't architects and designers design to a functional spec? If I hired Frank Lloyd Wright to design a garage for me, it darn well better hold cars. I don't care what your designer thinks, if he is designing an office, it has to be a functional office first, and a showcase for his skills second. If he has to jump through hoops to make it both, those are his hoops, not yours. Anytime a designer expects a functional change to make his design easier it demonstrates two things:
1- He misunderstands his position in the scheme of things
2- He is not a good imaginative designer, who would make a way to either hide the cabling or make the cabling aesthetically pleasing and harmonize with the rest of his design.
If the Bobs at your place of employment actually weigh design and function equally they are equally wrong. You can have functioning ugliness or your can have functioning attractiveness, or you have dysfunction, one of those does damage to the future outlook of your company.
Bah! I feel scrooginess coming on.
"Proximity to wonder has blunted our perception and appreciation of it" --Tim Hartnell in 'Exploring ARTIFICIAL INTELLI
http://www.theverge.com/2013/11/19/5122290/small-empires-010-squarespace-video
They used a raised platform and even put some rope lighting underneath around the edges. Looks great and would give you a way to run cables underneath to the workstations.
Have you looked at cable lacing? You could skip the trays and just suspend the laced bundle from the celing.
Yes, this exactly.
Keep the tray as small and unobtrusive as possible, you actually want to see as much of the cable as possible. Don't try to hide the but find a professional installer that will make the cables neat, tidy as possible. Belden and cables and others have a wide range of colors that you could offer and you could probably find a nice bold one to go with what the designer might like. It could actually be something of a feature if this is a design/tech kind of company.
Hi there. I want to talk to you about network cable trays. Do your network cable trays seem old-fashioned, out of date? Central Services' new network cable trays designs are now available in hundreds of different colours to suit your individual tastes. Hurry now while stocks last to your nearest Central Services showroom. Designer colours to suit your demanding tastes.
The open floor plan concept is awful. Reminds me of Sarte's "No Exit" play. People sitting around staring at each other. Or Les Nessman's tape indicating where walls should be.
And there was an article about attracting talent. One good place to start is with walls.
We're in a building made entirely of bricks and concrete, so we lack some of the between-the-wall spaces that are used in other settings.
Are you sure there is no isolation in the walls? Might this building be located in the subtropics? There are always some molding in the interior which can carry cables unless you have metal mesh floors or something similar. Also use the network topology to your advantage.
Put the switches inside of pretty, wood cases... with or without locks, depending on how much you trust the staff to play nice.
Unless you've got dozens of people running video, gigabit backbone runs should be enough... run multiple ggabit lines to the central switches if you have to, single gigabit to the floor switches. .. There's rarely any real need to run single gigibit lines from the server room to every client. For most services, 100Meg should be enough to the clients (helps to moderate burst loads), and gigabit for trunking.
Generally, bandwidth use tends to be sporadic, so network congestion shouldn't be that bad
Sometimes boldness is in fashion. Sometimes only the brave will be bold.
Go through the floor, dig it up. break it up. Looks great, don't ask about cost :).
Do your workstations have access to power outlets? I bet they do!
You can run Ethernet along the electrical wiring.
You can use a buttload of those power line Ethernet adapters.
You can replace all electrical wiring with Ethernet and then run your whole business off of Power Over Ethernet because let's face it - if you guys are for open floor plans and bright walls to the extent that you're having a fight with your only competent employee about not wanting to running Ethernet because of the aesthetics, you're not really doing anything worth while anyway.
You put small clips on the bottom of the cable trays. In a corner of the room you have a pot with a plant such as a philodendron. It grows up to the cable trays and along.
I've seen this done just using bent paper clips hanging from the frames holding ceiling tiles. It made for a great office with all that green overhead. Light-weight office plants won't bother the cables if they curl a bit into the trays. If someone is working in the tray, she can just cut off anything in the way.
The office I saw used philodendron, but there may be better plants; it depends on the green thumbs available.
Let a contractor with a concrete router cut out cable paths in the floor and install wiring there.
Suspended ceilings. Hides everything.
Low profile raised floor is an alternative. they are designed for workspaces. They are expensive, but very flexible and easy to work with.
Here is another cable comb variant that I have found a little easier to use:
http://arctooldesigns.com/
They sell them pretty cheap on Amazon:
http://www.amazon.com/The-Data-Cable-Comb/dp/B00GNQO1AA/ref=sr_1_1?s=hi&ie=UTF8&qid=1386113554&sr=1-1&keywords=ARC+Communications
And use old plumping pipes. Great cable trays and go with the design of the building.
Good stuff to be had here
If you get the core of the wiring done in a way that supports the actual work that needs to be done, the additional wiring that evolves over time is going to be relatively simple, neat, and save time and money.
If you build the core of the wiring in a way that doesn't fit with the actual communication patterns, you'll quickly end up with a jerry-rigged mess that'll look worse and waste time doing the wiring, plus you'll waste more time arguing with the idiot who forced you to do it wrong.
If neither of those options appeals to you, spend the money on a raised floor, which will not only handle your cooling needs but let you hide the wires.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
We started out with twist on attachments that mounted to the ceiling framework and provided a 1/4 inch stud, added a barrel nut and a bridle ring. All came from the local electrical contracting supply house, and were inexpensive, plus it all goes together with no tools other than a step ladder to reach the ceiling.
We we moving into a very large open space with a LOT of equipment to be interconnected. I managed the effort, and the one thing I was sure of was that the floorplan would not be what we imagined once we got used to the new space, and that it would be fluid over time. The bridle rings let us get the cables overhead and out of the way, but it's very easy to change things up, either by adding/removing cables, or rerouting them. If you need to go off in a different direction, it's a simple matter to add more rings. If a particular ring is no longer needed, simply remove it and the barrel nut, leaving the (unobtrusive) stud fixture in place for potential later use. They're cheap.
The intent was that as things stabilized over time, a "backbone" would emerge, and we would replace the bridle rings on the stable portions of the network with product from these guys: http://www.snaketray.com/ , with the idea that we could unscrew the bridle ring and barrel nut, and then hang the snake tray from the same attachment hanging from the suspended ceiling framework.
As it turned out, we never got around to that upgrade, as the bridle ring lashup worked very well for us. I no longer work there, but the approach I describe above worked for ~10 years.
The other option to explore is some variation of raised flooring. It does not have to be in the mode of the old machine room, 12 inches or so above the base flooring...... there are companies that sell what are basically interlocking floor mats with cable channels and removable carpeting tops. Looks like regular office flooring, but houses your cabling.
Hope this helps.....
-Red
Here at Disney Interactive's Grand Central Creative Campus they built the new building with all of the HVAC and cabling running under the floors. It makes for a very clean look; no downposts carrying cables from above a false ceiling. The floor has several junction boxes with power and network that blend into the carpet scheme nicely. It's a little strange having forced air coming up from the floor rather than down from the ceiling. :)
Some of his arms can touch the walls, where you can feed your data in, then in his mealballs you can put some patch panels, suspend the whole thing from the ceiling, and then have a noodly appendage reach out to touch each of the cubicles, and run cable through them.
Seriously, we have no idea what your decorating motif is. Somebody else can do the steampunk version of above, it can be a fantastic idea and completely inappropriate for your office decor. Talk to your designer.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
In Argentina, all our buildings are concrete and brick. We use tubes through the walls were all our electric, telephone and ethernet installation goes through. Get some power tools, cement, and paint, and do it the old-fashioned way.
Lay the cable trays, build a lighting cove to each side, and ceiling paneling underneath, then stick some led strip in it, and uplight the ceiling.
And now everyone's happy.
You can get some PVC pipe of a nice, wide gauge. Then slice it in thirds, 120 degrees each section. There are PVC paints you can use to make these whichever color is available. You might need to rough the surface of the PVC, first. If you want them plain white, there are ways of removing the colorful print. Use the round, ooh-ah PVC sections instead of the flat, painted-aluminum (or plastic) trays. The round surfaces should reflect the light below in a more eye-pleasing way. Still suspended from the ceiling, though.
You could buy a lot of smaller gauge PVC and run the cables through that. Do yourself a favor and cut the sections in half, and hinge them on the side away from the wall so you could still open them up section by section if you had to. Attach the PVC to the walls with washers and bolts at stud points. Close up the hinges and latch with whatever. You could paint it bronze and it's be kooky, steampunk style stuff yeah.
You could do real steampunk style, and buy metal pipe instead of PVC. You could have this cockamamie maze of pipes running up and down the walls, over the chairs and desks, and arriving at lamp posts (actually lit by flickering LEDs, not actual gas! Hah! Haha!) which the office workers discreetly plug their computers and other devices into.
You could get simple tin foil (food grade) and wrap the cables up in that. I have no idea how this will affect their performance in terms of temperature. But they'll be shiny.
You could get some plastic mesh and spray paint it silvery, double the edges and run your support wires through the doubled up holes. The mesh should theoretically be able to support a bunch of wires (maybe triple fold those edges). The cables would show but hey, they're colorful.
You could just support the bundled up cables themselves "naked" to the eye. It would be a bitch to get at the cables and take any down without taking them all down, but there they'd be. A person looking up could see how the network is "shaped". It would be like a magic trick.
You could support all of the cables on a bunch of really, really tall hat racks with allll kinds of crazy hats hanging from them, along with all of these network cables. People would wonder if they could have a hat, purchase a hat, or add their own hat to an empty prong. You could just deny them the satisfaction all day, and come across as WAAAAY more smugly superior than they.
Get a bunch of fake Christmas trees and throw out all the stupid false needles, just leaving behind the weird wire skeletons. Put a bunch of them together in a giant matrix of wiry voodoo. Thread your cables through this, along with strands of blinking LED "holiday lights". Put the giant borg in a really obtrusive location so everybody will question THAT, and nobody will care about how unappealing or inconvenient it is to have the cables snaking to and from this thing to various other locations.
You could build a glass ceiling and snake the wires around like crazy and make it all topsy turvy, artsy fartsy with your artistic talent glass ceiling existing purely for art's sake. Clients and other visitors could be invited to throw little peastones at it, to give it character.
"Stratigraphically the origin of agriculture and thermonuclear destruction will appear essentially simultaneous" -- Lee
Bold Colour. Lots of configuration options. Would look good in an open office space. Nothing says you can't run copper ethernet cables in it.
The building I work in was built in the 30s and there's no money for upkeep, much less fancy fucking cable trays. In the summers, the urinals, sinks, and toilets overflow with the recent (and not so recent) deposits we've been making to said equipment. In the winter, it rains inside. The doors are always open. The floors are slick with hydraulic fluid everywhere. Old cement falls from the ceiling and we hope the jury rigged net catches it. Wire! We've got cabling from every decade. Some work, some don't. Some are randomly cut off and hanging about of walls.
Cable trays to match the decor? First world problems, my friend.
Primary transmitters on one side of the room. Aligned mirrors at strategic locations to bounce the main beams down to desk level. Receivers to demux and convert to cables for the last few feet to individual machines.
How was the electrical runs installed. You could fish it through the same pipes. It depends on the aesthetic of the space. The designer and IT lead need to sit down and hammer some sort of list of exclusions and weighted scorecard and then look for the optimum solution.
Why has no one mentioned fiber trays? I, personally, think they're beautiful, and would seemingly fit in with the environment you are describing. Fiber trays don't HAVE to be used for fiber :-p
So trolling definitely means taht someone is a loser? How can you determine someone's success in life, social relations etc. based on a single trolling post on a forum? To me, your narrow judgement based on, well, nothing, sounds like those of an arrogant loser. I also want both the inverse and converse represented.
"Glue" and "Glitter".