Hey Dana, there is a way to remove your first three steps. That is to add Melodyne to Sonar's 'Utilities' menu. As long as the 'type' is set to 'WaveEditor', Sonar will send the audio clip to the app. Once that's done, you just select a clip, go to Utilities and choose your newly added 'Melodyne' entry in Sonar - this opens Melodyne with the clip already loaded. Just make a new key under HKLM\Software\Cakewalk Music Software\Tools Menu like I have here:
This will shorten the process for you. And if working on your second iteration of your recipe, you keep your original project open, but open the exported midi clip in a new Sonar project, from where you copy it to your existing project.
If you're not familiar with or comfortable editing the registry, let me know and I can send you a .reg file that will add it automatically.
Bill.