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What is an Elisa hierarchy

Élisa’s custom hierarchy is the underlying structure used to organize your design sessions into manageable and reusable chats. Each time you initiate a design session via Design with Élisa, the system generates a new chat node. Inside it, Élisa separates the assets you want to work with into two categories:
  • Élisa actors: Assets placed by Élisa, or any assets manually added here to influence context and iteration.
  • Surface actors: The base assets (usually surfaces or floors) you chose to design upon.

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How does Elisa lists chats

Each chat session initiated by the user is automatically stored as a “New chat - …” actor within the Élisa Chats container. The structure always follows this pattern:
  • “New chat - …”: Stores the design session. Right-clicking this actor allows you to restore that session.
  • “Elisa actors”: The context Élisa reads and builds upon.
  • “Surface actors”: The base that was originally selected when invoking “Design with Élisa.”
If one of the node is deleted, the associated design session will most likely be corrupted and lost.
To properly delete a design session, see Clearing a surface documentation page.

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Elisa actors vs Surface actors

Within the hierarchy, these two concepts are mapped to their respective folders under a chat node:
  • “Elisa actors”: These represent the design-relevant actors that Élisa uses to understand and evolve the scene. They include both Élisa-placed and/or manually moved assets.
  • “Surface actors”: These are the physical surfaces selected when starting a new design session. Élisa uses these as a spatial reference for all placements.
Keeping these roles distinct ensures Élisa understands what to build on versus what to consider for context.

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Using an existing “non-Elisa” layout

To iterate on an existing layout that hasn’t been created by Élisa, you can follow this process:
  1. Select your surface assets (usually floor meshes or anything supporting other objects). Remeber that this defines the area on where Élisa can work.
  2. Right-click and choose Design with Élisa — this creates a new chat node in the hierarchy, along with its Surface actors group.
  3. Then, select all the assets currently placed on top of that surface and move them under the new Élisa actors group.
Once moved, Élisa will treat these assets as part of the active design context. This allows you to continue building on top of the existing layout, with full awareness of what’s already there.