[Bug]: Unable to create projects due to 'invalid' path error

[linahassoun]

What happened?

I cannot create new CEA projects at any location in CEA‑4 Desktop or the dev GUI.

I can open and work with existing/example projects normally. But when I try to create a new project or change the project location, I get: Error: Path <> is not a valid path (see examples). This happens using, directories in the same folder as the example project that does open, directories under my user profile (e.g. Desktop), simple locations like C:, and using directories without special characters including spaces/dashes/underscores.

How can we reproduce this?

1. Install CEA‑4 Desktop using the official CEA-4-Desktop-Setup-4.0.0-beta.7.exe (fresh installation).
2. Launch CEA‑4 Desktop and try to create a new project or change the project location to any folder.
3. Uninstall CEA‑4 Desktop, then reinstall it using the same .exe.
4. Clone CityEnergyAnalyst-GUI and CityEnergyAnalyst from source, set up the dev backend, and run yarn electron:dev.
5. Use the dev GUI’s project chooser to create/change a project location as in step 2.

I’m aware that other users are able to create projects normally on similar setups, but I’m unsure how the path requirements are defined and why my environment is violating them.

Operating System

Windows

CEA Version

4.0.0-beta7

Additional information (optional)

No response

[reyery]

@linahassoun sorry for the late response. I was unable to recreate this issue on my Mac, let me try it on Windows machine again and will let you know.