Well, not sure what to tell you. As far as I know, Maya isn't exactly made for technical art, or at least, doesn't have CAD-style measurement features. Unless I'm just unaware, which could be possible.

I've never had a project where rigid, exact measurements were necessary. If I made a car, using blueprints as my image planes, and in another file, made a character; and then import the car into the character's scene, if there was any scale problem, I'd just scale the car up to where it looked right. Same with any other props (dresser, for instance).

Doesn't exactly help you, I suppose, but if I were given your dresser project, I'd probably lay out several measuring tools first to "map" out what I need and then model to their specifications.