Question-and-Answer Resource for the Building Energy Modeling Community
 | 1 | initial version |
The EnergyPlus illuminance map object can only be rectangular, unfortunately. Currently OpenStudio only supports rectangular maps as well. We are in the process of revamping the Radiance support for OpenStudio 1.9 (Fall 2015), which will include the ability to automatically define grids that conform to the shapes of your spaces. This will really improve the daylight metics reporting, and we are excited about this new functionality.
In the meantime, if you are using Radiance in OpenStudio, you could define the maps to be larger than the space extents as you suggest. The problem is that the daylight metrics reporting in OpenStudio will be off because the out of bounds points cannot be excluded. You can do your own reporting and analysis on the output illuminance, using Excel or R or whatever though.
