I probably should have been paying more attention to this thread. My academic experience has been in computer design methods for engineers, and my early professional experience was in developing automation methods for design engineering -- integrated assembly design, etc. Much of that discussion applies here.
I learned paper-and-pencil drafting. I like paper-and-pencil drafting. I'm good and paper-and-pencil drafting. My work with CAD was primarily to address why people don't use it in the early stages of design. The answer is that it's clunky and restricts creativity in the early stages. People who come up with the best geometric designs, whether it be a gearbox bearing for a rocket engine or an elegant console table, think visually and "brainstorm" visually. CAD systems, in general, provide poor tool sets and methods for supporting this way of thinking.
My most beloved mentor was a guy who worked as a mechanical engineer on the Apollo spacecraft, the docking mechanisms to be precise. This guy is still a practicing engineer, and although he is big into CAD, he still carries with him everywhere a pad of that pale green grid paper that engineers like to use. He spends every spare minute drawing something on that pad freehand.
My experience has been that those who are best at design in general are those who can draw with pencil, even if the final design is on a CAD system. Further, those who are the best at design can draw well freehand. There seems to be a very strong correlation between those who can express themselves visually and accurately WITHOUT a CAD system, and those who produce quality, usable, visually appealing designs intended toward any purpose or recorded in any medium.
In technical drawing we learned the tedious process of "geometric construction" (e.g., constructing a hexagon using only simple drafting tools). CAD systems all but eliminate geometric construction. You click on "hexagon" and drag it where you need it and size it to what you wanted. That's not really the point. By learning -- even via tedium -- the simple basis from which complex shapes and relationships are made, you expand your spatial vocabulary.
CAD is here to stay, but CAD is not the solution to all design problems. CAD is great for managing the complexity of commercial design needs, for automating some of the time-consuming elements of design, and other efficiency-oriented things. The business of design requires this level of efficiency. It is less well suited to the task of "capturing ideas on paper". And, sadly, it should be. It's wasteful to put an idea on paper and, in a separate effort, put in in a computer.
But if my work with CAD/CAE/CAM has taught me anything, it's that the skill of producing a design on a sheet of paper using nothing but a square, a straightedge, a compass, and a pencil, is *not* an outmoded, archaic, or useless skill.