Toolbars allow you to access commands faster than using the drop-down menus in the menu bar. There are many pre-made toolbars, and you can create your own custom toolbars as well.
For starting out, I recommend you turn off the default Getting Started toolbar and place the Standard, Styles, and Views toolbars at the top of your screen, and the Large Tool Set along the left of your screen. The Large Tool Set has many of the tools you'll use while modeling. The Styles toolbar is useful for toggling X-ray mode, and turning colors on and off while modeling. The View toolbar is used for aligning the model to camera views such as Front, Top, or Iso views.
While toolbars are nice for beginners, I recommend you also learn the keyboard shortcuts to speed up your modeling. You can find a one page cheat sheet of keyboard shortcuts at http://help.sketchup.com/en/article/116693.
There are a few dialog boxes that you'll use frequently. While you can close them to make more drawing space, and get them back from the Window menu when needed, I like to keep the commonly used ones minimized on the right side of my screen. The ones I keep open are as follows:
- Entity Info
- Components
- Materials
- Soften Edges
- Layers
To minimize a dialog box, just click on the top of its window once, and it will roll up so just its name is visible. This way, it stays out of the way but is easily accessible. The boxes stick together, making it easy to keep them looking neat.
The following screenshot is what my screen looks like when I open SketchUp to begin modeling:
You can see how the drawing space dominates the window. The toolbars are arranged at the top and left side of the window, and the dialog boxes are neatly minimized near the upper right side of the screen.