One of the new additions to the 2018 Edition of IEEE 1584 is an adjustment factor for the enclosure size.

The new equations are normalized to a 20 x 20 inch opening but can be adjusted for larger openings (or smaller subject to certain conditions).

The new edition of IEEE 1584 also lists “typical� enclosure sizes based on the equipment class/type that software will likely default to.

So here is this YEAR’s first question: (Happy New Year!)

Will you/clients/company base studies on actual enclosure sizes or use “typical� values from IEEE 1584?
Actual sizes
Typical values from IEEE 1584
Not sure yet
It depends
Doesn’t apply

It will definitely be 'actual size'. Considering both smaller (if shallow) and larger than the default 20x20'' lead to lower incident energy I'd only be interested in how close to worst-case it comes. For data collection I'll gather typical enclosure sizes per configuration and take the worst-case size correction factor for each configuration as a base for calculation.

I bought some flexible magnetic 10'' rulers (think fridge magnet) that should aid in estimating sizes both in the field and from photos. If anyone has other ideas I'd love to hear about it.