2020 Batch Save utility doesnt like 2020

[spear_kevin_pe]

Hi, i just tried to run the batch save utility on a folder of old drawings. When launching, I am greeted with an unhandled exception that relates to the date '1/7/2020 12:00:00 AM' is not valid and should be between the min and max date.

Anyone else get this error?

[user181]

I got the error but once I continued and set the dates I wanted I never got the error again. 

[Darin.Green]

@user181 I think @spear_kevin_pe question is why is this happening...

The reason is caused by the SkipBefore & SkipAfter values are blank by default.  So, the first launch will show that error because Autodesk didn't trap or handle the error or populate the value within "C3D_BatchSave.exe.config" file.

This is a bigger issue because once in the tool, you (or just me) cannot select a date from the menu.  Even if I click "Today" is doesn't populate the date...

Like @user181 said, clicking continue will open the application and populate the date with Jan 1, 1990.  However, there's a larger issue there as you can see from my screenshots.

[GTVic]

The one that came with Civil 3D 2019 has this issue on one computer. Upgraded to the standalone version that came with 2020 and the problem remained. In this case hitting Continue doesn't work, just more errors.

Found the .exe.config file in a different folder than the .exe file:

C:\ProgramData\Autodesk\C3DBatchSaveTool

On my computer the dates were set to May 2019, I tried to change to 2020 but it won't go beyond Jan 1, 2020 in the picker. But still I get no errors.

Updating the .config file as follows allowed the program to run with no errors on the other computer. I believe this will set the dates to Jan 1, 2019 and April 1, 2019 respectively.

    <add key="SkipBefore" value="636818976000000000" />
    <add key="SkipBeforeCheck" value="False" />
    <add key="SkipAfter" value="636896736000000000" />
    <add key="SkipAfterCheck" value="False" />

[BlackBox_]

FWIW, one does not have to use Batch Save Utility in order to leverage Core Console:

https://forums.augi.com/showthread.php?77021-How-to-create-a-routine-to-batch-process-files-or-a-dir...

[GTVic · Accepted solution]

The 2021 version fixes the date bug. This can be found in the Civil 3D 2021 download.

Autodesk_Civil_3D_2021_...\x64\Components\BatchSave\BatchSave_Standalone.exe

There is another bug found in the 2020 version that displays an error about an blank or zero-length string value. This is the saved log location it is complaining about. The following file can be updated with a good copy from another computer to fix that problem. Not sure if this is fixed in the 2021 version.

C:\ProgramData\Autodesk\C3DBatchSaveTool\C3D_BatchSave.exe.config