Equivalent to graphicx draft/demo option for tables

I've borrowed some work from Draft mode for pgfplots in the solution below.

If you use

\documentclass[draft]{article}

then all the tables will not appear. If you use

\documentclass{article}

then they'll appear as usual.

I've used the verbatim package just for the comment environment.

Measuring the dimensions of the table would be tricky- perhaps this will help someone go in that direction.

%\documentclass{article}
\documentclass[draft]{article}
\usepackage{verbatim}

\makeatletter
\@tempswafalse
\def\@tempa{draft}
\@for\next:=\@classoptionslist\do
  {\ifx\next\@tempa\@tempswatrue\fi}
\if@tempswa % draft option is active
    \renewenvironment{table}{\comment}{\endcomment}
    \fi
\makeatother

\begin{document}

hello world

\begin{table}[!htb]
    \begin{minipage}{.5\textwidth}
        \centering
        \caption{}
        \label{tab:first}
        \begin{tabular}{rcl}
            right & center & left \\
            right & center & left 
        \end{tabular}
    \end{minipage}%
    \begin{minipage}{.5\textwidth}
        \centering
        \caption{}
        \label{tab:second}
        \begin{tabular}{rcl}
            right & center & left \\
            right & center & left 
        \end{tabular}
    \end{minipage}
\end{table}


\end{document}

Alternative

Or else you might prefer to load tikz or pgf and then use the following in the \ifdraft check

\renewenvironment{tabular}{%
\pgfpicture\pgfpathrectanglecorners{\pgfpointorigin}{\pgfpoint{3cm}{3cm}}%
     \pgfusepath{stroke}\endpgfpicture%
\comment}{\endcomment}

which gives