I dont quite understand what you are describing. Could you provide a graphic or perhaps a video capture to help better explain the problem you are seeing?
Just a guess but the active layer–the one you are drawing on–is lower in the list of layers than the one on which the SketchUp viewport is situated. Either use a layer higher in the stack, rearrange the layers or move the viewport to a layer lower in the stack than the one you wish to draw on.
In LayOut, the order of layers is important unlike in SketchUp where the order isn’t important.