Before interacting with your data or visualizing anything in 3D, it's important to understand the fundamental building blocks of LiquidEarth. These elements define how your work is structured, stored, visualized, and shared.

In LiquidEarth, every project is composed of three core types of elements:

Element Type	Role	Can Contain	Contained By
Space	The container for an entire project. A space is required to upload or manage any data.	Content, Blocks	—
Content	Represents imported or created 3D data (e.g., meshes, boreholes, rasters, Object3D shapes).	Blocks	Space
Block	Modular tools or annotations (e.g., notes, views, sketches, clipping planes). Enhance interpretation or storytelling.	—	Space or Content

🔹 Spaces: Your Project’s Container

A Space is the root of any project in LiquidEarth. You must create or load a space before adding any data or annotations. It serves as the organizing unit and the container for everything else — content, visual settings, and collaboration.

Spaces can be shared, duplicated, or made available offline.
All uploaded content and blocks live inside a space.
Currently, spaces cannot be nested, but this feature is planned.
Spaces can include visual guides such as a bounding box, gridlines, and axis labels.

For more details, see: Space

A space without any visible content or blocks. The bounding box, gridlines, and axis labels are enabled. A colored outline indicates the space is currently selected.

🔹 Content: Your 3D Data

Content elements are the actual data you’re working with in a project. This includes geological surfaces, drillholes, volumetric models, raster overlays, and more. It also includes user-added elements like Object3D shapes for guiding presentations or structuring narratives.

Each piece of content:

Is contained within a space
Has its own transform and visibility settings
Can have blocks attached to it for notes, clipping, sketching, and more

For more details, see: Content

A space with multiple surface meshes as content. One of the meshes is selected, indicated by a colored outline.

📁 Content Grouping (Explorer)

In the Explorer, Content elements are automatically grouped based on how they were imported:

When importing a file (e.g., a set of drillholes, meshes, or a volume), all resulting elements are placed into a group labeled with the file name.
Even if a file only includes a single item (like one mesh), it still appears in its own group.
Object3D elements, created inside the app, are shown in a separate, persistent group.

Groups provide structural clarity in the Explorer and help manage large projects. However, they are not shown in the 3D view and currently cannot contain blocks. Think of them as organizational folders for imported data, not as separate elements.

🔹 Blocks: Annotation & Tools

Blocks are modular features that extend the functionality of content or the space itself. They help you track information, highlight and communicate findings, or analyze your data interactively.

Blocks are categorized into Annotation Blocks and Tool Blocks.

Annotations	Tools
‣	‣
‣
‣
‣

A space with multiple surface meshes and two visible blocks: a callout and a clipping plane. The callout is selected (outlined in blue) and applied to the space, as indicated by the space’s yellow outline.

Each block is always attached to a space or a content element — they don’t exist independently. At the moment, blocks can’t be transferred between elements, but this functionality is coming in a future release.

For more details, see: Block