What's this feature called so I can look it up?

I'm working on a percussion piece, and much of it will be live instruments. But I'm not going to record entire parts, rather I'm going to find specific hits I like and then create patterns out of that. I could take the tiny audio clips that represent the hits I want and copy them to the beats I need, but that's a very laborious process and therefore not conducive to getting the creative juices going and experimenting. So I'm sure there's a feature in Sonar whereby I can assign an audio clip to a Midi note or something, and then trigger it just like it were a regular Midi note, and I'm happy to look up how to do it, but I don't know what the feature is even called, so I can't even look it up. Could someone point me in the right direction?

Ah, so it is. I see. OK, so then I can just record whatever sounds I want and then assign them to drums in a Session Drummer instance? Is that the best practice, to record them in a track in Sonar, export a clip as a wav, and then assign the wav to the drum? Am I limited to the number of drums in my kit (looks like 12 slots)? Can I assign different wavs to different velocities or anything?

Look at the Matrix.

DropZone? Is it included with any modern Cakewalk programs?

sharke
Look at the Matrix.

sfz files do not require a special tool to created or edit. They can be maintained using a text editor. There are hundreds of examples installed with the synths bundled with SONAR. Dimension Pro, Rapture, Session Drummer and several others play sfz files.
 
To see what an sfz looks like, assuming a default installation, the sfz files for Session Drummer are installed in "C:\Program Files\Cakewalk\Vstplugins\Session Drummer 3\Contents\Kits." When I was building kits by hand, I would copy one of the files in there and replace the sample references with my own.

I think I have some definitive answers for you.
 
The Matrix isn't really optimum, because you can't trigger a one-shot properly. It's designed more for looping, so you have to hold the trigger key down for as long as you want the sound to last if it's not a loop. Nor can you really record the "hits" properly as MIDI triggers. 
 
Session Drummer does the job very well, but it has only 12 channels audio instead of the MPC-style 16 channels, and the drum layout is disorienting if you're not doing something drum-related. However, each channel can have more than one sound (for example, the kick can have two separate samples triggered by different notes). So if you don't need separate outputs or processing for every sample, this will take care of you. If you do, insert more than one Session Drummer.
 
Another option is Cyclone DXi, which is ancient but is the closest to "MPC-style thinking." It lets you drag samples on to pads, trigger them as one-shots or loops, and more. There are two big drawbacks that may or may not matter: The pads don't respond to velocity, and they don't have a MIDI learn function (although you can change them manually to respond to particular notes and channels). If you just want to trigger samples and don't care about velocity response, this is the fastest option.

Sforzando's "hidden perk" is that you can tap directly into Dimension Pro programs to see which keys are actually mapped to sounds. There are a few DP programs with only a few keys active, which makes it seem like DP is "not working" at times.