When working with sketchup most tools will respond to direct keyboard input.
This is most often done by starting an action and simply typing what you want.
So start to draw a line by click and release the start point, move the cursor in the desired direction, take your hand off the mouse and type in mid air, 8’6" and hit enter. The line will snap to that length.
This works with rectangles, start the shape and type 9’,6’ and hit enter and your rectangle will snap to those dimensions.
There are many other times you can type things, scaling, arraying, copying, specific locations…
The thing to remember is, don’t go looking for the box to click in, start the action and just type what you want and hit enter.
SketchUp is constantly telling you what to do when applying a tool. It is doing so on the right side in the status bar below the drawing area on screen.
And even better, at the same time down, on the right you have an example (the current value(s)) of how to enter these values. The values are displayed in the ‘Measurements’ field. Don’t click in there, just start typing and end with [Enter]
Try it out with each tool and closely watch the hints given by SketchUp.
