During school I did a furniture project and my tutor only came in one day a week for that semester to critique our work. She is very well respected in the UK/Europe and is often referred to as a leading designer.
She was very much for prototyping in CAD which at the time I too found unusual thinking “surely it is better to see my design in front of me instead of on a screen”. During my project I spent a week making a rough model out of cheap wood for my design only to realize how bad it looked. During my critique all she said was “if you had done this in CAD like I said you could have seen how bad it was in 10 minutes and then rectified the problem”
Like cadjunkie said you can probably make 10 iterations of a table in the time it takes to make a set of four legs in the shop. I wouldn’t consider it an insult to the craft of being able to make furniture by hand but see it as your role as a designer to use what ever tools necessary to quickly and accurately COMMUNICATE your design.
With the tools that Soldiworks offers you can also test certain elements before bringing a concept in to the real world. For example folding tables etc.