I have been collaborating with a friend, and whenever I bring over a project (the whole project folder) and load it up, it can't find "his" versions of the shared 3rd party VSTs we both have.
 
Example:  We both have several Waves VSTs (same version), yet when he loads up my project, the "missing VST" dialogue comes up, and there is no way (as we all know) to "point it" to his folder or VST.
 
Anyone seen this, or no how to remedy it?  It makes working on a project tough as most 3rd party VSTs are lost in translation.

Any chance you two have a mismatch between having VST vs. VST3 installed?  I believe the VST and VST versions won't be recognized as each other.  If you use VST3 but have the VST installed also, I believe SONAR will hide the VST versions but still pick them up if requested.  

Are your plugin location paths identical? I'm not actually sure how relevant it is, but that's the first thing that popped in my mind. IIRC, the paths are global, not project sensitive, but anyways...

We have also 4 PCs sharing the same VST-plugins.
They have to be both 64 bit and VST3 (or both 32 Bit and VST2)
No missmatch with different bit resolution or vst2 or vst3.
And they have to be the "identical" version of plugins.
 

I don't use waves plugins but I move projects between my desktop and laptop all the time and don't have that issue and use lots of third party plugins.

Are you both using the same on and version of Sonar?

You could just create a quick project and test which plugins are giving you problems . That should give you are good starting point to work out what's going on.

Kalle Rantaaho
Are your plugin location paths identical? I'm not actually sure how relevant it is...

 
The paths don't need to match, but the VST ID needs to be the same.

just checking back on this thread.  thx for all the tips.  I'll keep experimenting to find out what is working and what is not.