I think what you're remembering is this:
In earlier versions (X3 for example), if you slip-edited a clip back to time zero, and drag-dropped it out of SONAR to your file system
without bouncing it first, the events would have the same timestamps as the original so they would start at the same time when opened/imported to another app (or back into SONAR).
In Platinum, the relative start times of a slip-edited clip are no longer preserved by drag-drop, only by Save-As MIDI. I'm not sure when that changed.