MA3 PDF Exporter

Export grandMA3 fixture patch data to professionally formatted PDF documents

Overview

MA3 PDF Exporter is a Lua plugin for grandMA3 lighting consoles that exports your fixture patch data to a clean, printable PDF document. Perfect for documentation, backup records, or sharing patch information with your team.

Features

• PDF Export — Generate professional PDF documents with fixture tables
• Statistics Report — Optional statistics page with fixture counts and parameter info
• USB Auto-Detection — Automatically detects connected USB drives
• Complete Patch Data — Exports FID, IDType, CID, Name, Fixture Type, Mode, and Universe Address
• Grouping Support — Preserves fixture grouping hierarchy in the export
• Grouping Filter — Select which groupings to include/exclude per stage before exporting
• System Info — Includes show name, date, hostname, and author in the document

Installation

1. Download the MA3 PDF Exporter V2.lua file
2. Copy the file to your grandMA3 plugins folder:
   • Windows: C:\ProgramData\MALightingTechnology\gma3_x.x.x\shared\resource\lib_plugins\
   • Console: /user/plugins/
3. Import the plugin into a Plugin Pool in grandMA3
4. Run the plugin from the console

Usage

1. Connect a USB drive to your console or computer
2. Execute the plugin from your Plugin Pool
3. Select groupings to export:
   • Each detected grouping is listed with its stage (when multiple stages exist)
   • Set each grouping to Include or Exclude
   • Ungrouped fixtures can also be included/excluded
4. Configure export settings:
   • Enter a document name
   • Enter the programmer name
   • Select the target USB drive
   • Choose whether to include the statistics page
5. Click OK to generate the PDF
6. Find your PDF in the MA3_EXPORT_PDF folder on your USB drive

Exported Data

Fixture Table

Column	Description
FID	Fixture ID
IDType	ID Type
CID	Channel ID
Name	Fixture Name
Fixture Type / Mode	Type and DMX mode
U.Addrs	Universe and Address

Statistics Report (Optional)

• Total fixture count
• Grouping count
• Stage count
• Parameter count
• MA3 device parameter reference table

Requirements

• grandMA3 software or console (latest version recommended)
• USB storage device for file export

File Structure

USB Drive/
└── MA3_EXPORT_PDF/
    ├── YourDocumentName.pdf
    └── Statistics_Report.pdf (optional)

Changelog

v2.1.0

Bug Fixes

Bug	Cause	Fix
Blank PDF pages — 13 pages exported with grid lines but no text content	PDF page objects had no /Resources dictionary defining fonts. PDF viewers could draw lines but couldn't render text without knowing what /F1 and /F2 fonts are.	Added /Resources block with Helvetica (F1) and Helvetica-Bold (F2) Type1 font declarations to all page objects.
USB drive selection ignored — Output always went to the first USB drive regardless of user selection	The code hardcoded drives[2].path instead of reading the user's selected drive from the dialog result.	Now reads settings.selectors["USB Drive"] and maps it to the correct path via USBManager.paths.
Statistics page blank — Same blank rendering as main PDF, plus potential parsing failures	Missing font resources (same as main PDF) and hardcoded fake xref byte offsets (10, 50, 100, 200) that didn't match actual object positions.	Added font resources and implemented proper byte offset tracking for the xref table.

New Features

• Grouping Selection Filter — A new dialog appears before the export settings, listing all detected groupings organized by stage. Each grouping (and ungrouped fixtures) can be set to Include or Exclude. Only selected data is exported to PDF.

  • When a single stage exists, groupings are listed without a prefix
  • When multiple stages exist, each grouping is prefixed with its stage name (e.g., Stage 1 | Moving Lights)
  • If all items are excluded, an error is shown instead of generating a blank PDF

• Name Column Truncation — Fixture names longer than 25 characters are automatically truncated with ... to prevent text overflow into adjacent columns.

• UI Theme System — All dialogs now share a centralized theme configuration (Config.UI_THEME), making the interface consistent and easy to customize.

Author

LumiArt-Studio

• GitHub: @MayBeLinux

License

This project is licensed under the MIT License — see the LICENSE file for details.

Contributing

Contributions are welcome! Feel free to submit issues or pull requests.

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Made with ❤️ for the lighting community