I've had that same dialog and result across a wide variety of diciplines. The yacht people came to mind from the comments here.

I'm not really going to equate Web pages in the way you are attempting. The parallels are far too coarse and fail to be inclusive enough to make for meaningful discussion.

The idea of, it's worked before, so do it again is a good idea. But there are a lot of limits to doing that safely that are just not being considered here.

In a vacuum, "I need this thing", or even, "this building" doing that can make sense. I know a guy who has applied roughly these kinds of ideas to things like parking garages. My experience is more electromechanical, but there are strong parallels.

I will agree we may be closer on the AEC side of things. Design can often be less of a factor, but there still is all the analysis and verification on significant structures. For minor league things, are we not mostly there? A lot can be done without CAD and that's fine.

I will argue effective CAD can still improve on many of those cases. Making CAD accessible still seems to me the better path, and that's due to the fact that we really can't responsibly ignore the process.

CAD is a whole lot more than making plans, or defining shapes. There is descriptive and analytic geometry, two cases made difficult to employ on some CAD systems that were simplified to maximize more common use cases. Engineers and designers, who understand how and why one would use geometric methods, pay easily for capable CAD software that delivers great returns to all involved.

I also helped with a FAB, where everyone involved wanted to improve on the reams of paper drawings needed to communicate the work. There also needed to be a means to communicate variances from the plan too. Stuff happens, and is it cheaper to go with it, or rip it out and do over?

I modeled the whole FAB, and output the result as a 3D view, measure, section, etc... dataset. The guys could go on site, locate themselves and then see the work, to scale, measure, etc... they could also send back differences and errors in 2D and get fresh models to work from.

And we took a TON of cost out of that one. Pre construction bids were much closer to realities, there was far less error, far less overall comms between everyone, etc... I've been on a few other projects that are similar and can't say much. There are a few people in the world out there who are applying a lot more of the mechanical CAD capabilities with great results.

Because that was done in CAD, I have a ton of options. It's a great template for another FAB. I could add rules and constraints and limits to enhance that too. I have, as an exercise and now know I could make an 80 percent fab start model... the dataset is proprietary, so no sharing, but recent advances in CAD API options as well as how and what parametrics and rules can be input bring a lot to the table.

Yeah, making prtery stuff is a distraction. Management and culture problem. We have an education problem too. The things I mention here are mature, work well, but just not taught to the degree they should be. There is huge industry inertia holding things back in the AEC space that does not exist in the same degree in, say mechanical and entertainment. Entertainment and games have few human impacts, and we do see computational means being applied. Some of that has trickled into mechanical too. More will come.

And, it's not so practical to express these things in a purely computational way. Honestly, the barrier to entry on that is even higher! If you dislike vendor pricing on CAD, the sticker shock on those kinds of datasets will be brutal. Open ones won't be trusted, they will need to be evaluated, and closed ones will work, be supported, liability compliant, etc...

Even the basic input to a computational type system will need to be a sort of CAD, due to the difficulty we have in communication geometry, sans visual means. Should that system result in something viable, nobody would ethically bill with it, until after a professional does an analysis.

You mentioned scaling... well, applying high end CAD to stuff like this, and doing it the way the mechanical people have done it for years can scale! It's the CAD that can bring the scale to the table. It's been going on for years and we ate at the point of digitally simulating entire vehicles, factories, etc... and that stuff brings us better, faster, less expensive things and the automation needed to make them too.

2D rats nest drawings are going away. Delivering robust 4d and 3d to people is pretty awesome and a smaller planning, design, compliance, engineering group can do the work of many people and across multiple projects too.

Honestly, I think a lot of what you are getting at exists, and CAD enables it. Human input can be distilled down to a Web page. Design rules, template parts, intent and other compute driven inferences take people out of the equation now too.

In the mechanical case, the ongoing changes continue to add a lot of value. It's not just a business model. If anything, the AEC side of things could learn a few things from the mechanical people, who by the way, do take liberally from appropriate AEC ways and means where they make sense.

Both teams could benefit from software ways and means, and I know of at least one new, free to use on your phone or computer cloud type CAD tool doing exactly that.

There is a really ugly gap between small CAD, low complexity, and major efforts involving a lot of integrated systems.

Design reuse in this space holds a lot of value potential. It absolutely will not displace high end, real CAD (Siemens, Dassault), but could very well dominate a lot of the market, should it end up out there, possible for mortals to use, etc...

On a vendor specific note, Auto desk finally sees this and is building some nice stuff. They may be like AMD, always a bit behind for failing to build when others did, but maybe not. We shall see over the next 10 years.

The position of drafter or CAD jockey is on the decline. CAD will eventually settle into something most people can and want to do.

Maybe reaching that point will also mean enough days and expertise being captured to take steps in the direction you find appealing. It's gonna be a bit of a wait...