I absolutely beg to differ.

And I was there too. Have ran CAD, most systems you can name, and have done so, starting on an 8 bit Apple 2. (6502, 1mhz, 128K RAM)

A quick look at the high end software and it's advanced, integrated, data and code driven features shows a lot of new capability. You might not see much of it in AutoCAD, but it's out there.

In terms of being able to get the right information to the right people at the right time, what we've got today is absolutely huge compared to those times. In addition to geometry, it's possible to drive multiple, well integrated datasets from the core models and their intent, and it's possible to do so with code, or human input, or some data capture or other.

It's possible to make CAM ready models on a phone, and do so with a pretty capable geometry engine. An old wireframe type system really doesn't even compare.

One of the bigger improvements comes from the lightweight visualization pioneered in the early 90's. That same phone can render your site, with any combination of data needed, and do so in real time, and it can allow measure, move, markup and a lot of other basic things. There is no need for paper in a ton of use cases.

Back in those days, everybody needed paper. Lots. Of. Paper.

In the compute / design optimization space, integrating analysis software with CAD software has brought the ability to design, then simulate and automatically refine and tune models computationally. This can even be made cookie cutter, so that experienced analysis people can boil things down to help less experienced people out. That, plus design rule checks that actually are based on meaningful data from the solid models, means more and higher level design is more accessible to more people.

Geometrically, buildings are kind of simple most of the time. However, if one wants to actually express intent, and derive them computationally, the same kinds of problems exist as they do for, say the product space, or auto / aero.

When it comes to actually making more complex things and changing them, systems today can infer so much that prior generations of software could not. I have a hard time even describing how important and time saving this is.

And data?

Hell, what kind of data do you have? Real model, paper sketch, photograph, old wireframe, solids, surfaces, tabular data... ? The better systems can use any and all of it, and can do so in a robust, most always parametric, and associative way. (the latter, if desired, and that's not always desired)

Now, having been there, I can use an old system to build a lot of stuff today. Most of my younger peers would not even know where to begin. Good. They get a much improved workflow that is an order smarter than anything I ever saw from that time period.

Really, I'm not entirely sure you've seen advanced CAD. Autodesk isn't there yet, but they are working hard right now. Good things happening. It will take them a while, as I've mentioned already. A quick look at what the top two can actually do (Siemens Dassault) will show tons of smarts present now, not present or even possible then.

For experienced people, there is a whole lot there. Not just the surface either. For inexperienced people, it's growing very accessible now. The number of use cases for "non CAD" people to successfully interact with and operate using data from a CAD model is way up and growing.

That same phone, when not used to create something, could very easily deliver all the data somebody needs to do something, and they themselves can learn how to get anything they might need from that model too. It's just not anywhere near as hard as it once was, and paper finally isn't really needed.