@unknownuser said:

do any apps actually support this and/or does anyone/industry use that? if i understand correctly, you want to see 27' - 3 5/8" written as 27' 3.625"?

I don't know about other apps, I only use SU. I used to use ACAD, but so long ago, I don't recall what formats it used. I "grew up" in the aerospace industry, first as a field mechanic, then manufacturing inspection, then into aerospace project management. Then onto other fields, including programming, s/w development and s/w project management. That's over a 40+ year career in 3 separate fields.

Airplane parts were always measured in inch and decimal inch, even the big parts. (Now they are metric, but I don't think in metric, even in Canada) Very long parts such as wing spars were measured in feet - inch - dec.inch. So yes, I want to see 27 feet 3 5/8 inches as 27' 3.625. That is the way I type it into the VCB, but it always displays in Entity Info or Dimensions in the fractions format. And in most cases it shows as ~1/32 rather than 0.030 as I defined the dimension in the VCB.
In my mind it is not so big a deal for SU to show that format, so I cannot see why John and others before him are resisting so much, unless the NIH is a factor. (Not Invented Here)

John,
You said "Not sure what you're hoping to achieve here, but I am trying to answer your questions. I think I'm going to stop for a bit and show your post to some other folks to see if they can help me understand what you're trying to do. It isn't at all clear to me what work you're doing with SketchUp."

That is EXACTLY what I'm trying to achieve here. Instead of trying to explain away why some idea isn't being considered, without thinking it through, please get the "grunts" to mull it over and say that it is feasible, or, is not for a specific reason. You are not dealing with the general unwashed in these forums. In my experience, I've had managers attempt to "explain" why something could not be done, when, with my technical background I knew different. And any of the folks who have at least a few months working with SU can say the same.
The best answers I ever heard were "I'm not sure, but I will get back to you" and this is what you finally said. I will await your report. 👍

As for what I'm doing with SU? Well I have had ideas in many fields formulate in my head over the years. Now in retirement I have the time to put them into 3D. I have a mountain of pencil on paper sketches of many things, based on my past experiences. I used ACAD for years but only in 2D, so I could never realize some ideas fully.
SU changed all that in incredible time and ease of use. I never touched ACAD from a week after I discovered SU-V6. As a result, I now have a patent in the mill, and 4 more in preparation. And because of those proprietary models, I cannot show them to the SU community.
However I have posted (a few years ago) an early rendition of my big freighter on the previous (now defunct) forum, and if anybody wants, I'll repost it here again.