Forgive me if this is covered in the wiki tutorials but I've been unable to find it.

I'm interested in the best way to setup scenarios for testing. The wiki tutorials have you coc to a cell to trigger stuff, now that I'm working on a specific mod I need to have the following all together

NPC
Player companion (I'll use lydia in this example)
Player

for a specific event which alters the companion's dialog options.

Can I use the console to spawn actors into the appropriate cell? I use lydia above as it appears she doesn't even exist until the end of a specific quest.

Or do I need to play the game to a specific point and make a save as a baseline for testing?