For the life of me I can't get basic clip management to work. The issue is the same for midi and audio. I record a long audio track or midi track and then want to trim down those tracks by removing sections or moving sections. It sounds very easy, and it should be, but it's not. 
 
IF I cut a section of audio and then try and close the gap by dragging the clips they  get overlapped in an area further down the time line. There's no indicator that there's overlapped area, you can hear it but can't see it. Also I've noticed that when I try and move adjacent clips together they often repel each other and auto trim themselves. 
 
With midi it's much the same except if I'm trying to assemble a track from midi clips and they touch each other, well, they generate more clips down the time line that get overlapped and confused.
 
What I want to do is simple. I want to start with a long audio track and trim it down to size by cutting out chunks. I want to build midi tracks by inserting patterns into the time line. I don't want anything to happen automatically. I was doing this without problems 30 years ago with much simpler tools. Now that I've got a Cadillac in the DAW world I can't get it to run as reliably as my 1965 VW bug.
 
How, how, how.

hmm... Are you doing this in the parent track or do you have Take Lanes open? I'm having a hard time visualizing what your are doing which is why I'm guessing you may be manipulating stuff in the parent track. I have never really been able to figure out a good way to edit using only the parent tracks and I wish I could.
 
If you do indeed have Take Lanes closed while doing this there is probably all sorts of weird crap going on with the clips that you can't see. Unfortunately Lanes as cool as they are still tend to be a little strange and buggy at times. WHen trying to control the from the Parent Track... fuggedaboutit.

I'm trying to emulate what I would do with recording tape, scissors and scotch tape. I never use take lanes or anything fancy, just rudimentary cut, paste and move and I can't get it to work without the program generating problems. It must be my setting somewhere but I can't find it.

Have you tried changing the "Loop Recording" setting to "Store Takes in Separate Tracks" and uncheck "Create New Lanes on Overlap" in Preferences > Project > Record? By default SONAR is setup to use lanes. I believe these two changes may help. I do use lanes though and have not tried using X2 or newer without them.

Understand what snap settings you have. You can choose to cut things on a snap, say 1/8 and then slide them together and they will snap. Or you can turn snap off and they will slide together easily but you may have to zoom in to see how to align them. You can control snap from the menu at the top, if you don't see it there right-click and make sure the "snap" module is selected.
 
For audio clips, if they don't match up perfectly, try fading the clips. Select both clips, or multiple clips that are adjacent, select "fade" from the clips menu, and be sure to select "fill gaps, xfade between audio clips."
 
Also for audio, if you have a gap that is very wide, you can also stretch. I usually stretch the clip in front, select the clip and go to process > fit to time. In the option dialog select stretch audio and select one of the radius types in the pull down menu. Note that to define the "end" or "new thru" as it's listed in the dialog, you can click "format" multiple times to make it show in either M:B:T time or in seconds. 
 
All of these techniques are useful depending on what you're trying to do. If you're cutting clips to correct timing or if you're arranging something and want to move things around. 

ampfixer
I'm trying to emulate what I would do with recording tape, scissors and scotch tape. I never use take lanes or anything fancy, just rudimentary cut, paste and move and I can't get it to work without the program generating problems. It must be my setting somewhere but I can't find it.

Okay... yeah the lanes are screwing everything up on you then. Try what scook described but before doing so just for your own curiosity pop open the lanes and see what's going on when you make those types of moves. It'll likely make more sense why things are going crazy.
 
Thing is even though you don't intend to use Lanes you actually are and likely in Comp mode. Totally different workflow so it's not expecting the stuff you are doing. I have not tried to emulate the old school way since I think X1 (and as I said I think I wouldn't mind reverting to that sometimes because I began in an old version of Nuendo which worked more liek that) so I've totally given myself over to the "Lanes/Comp" method. It's pretty slick once you get the hang of it but it defintely will not operate the way you are describing.
 
Basically... trying to edit in the "parent track" (which is what you are probably expecting to be a normal, old school track) is pretty much a no go in those new modes. If you popped open lanes you could manipulate the clips more how you like (but you will still have a whole bunch of wacky stuff going on that you probably won't expect or like) so yeah... try what scook said. He knows all.
 
Cheers.

Yes, good points on the take lanes. If you want to do old school change it to overwrite recording instead of comping. I use take lanes and comp recording sometimes if I'm doing a single track.
 
If I'm doing multitrack drums I don't use it as it gets a bit complicated for that. 

Thanks guys, All the references you make are making sense and I understand them. I'll go back in and reconfigure the preferences and see if it helps. I always forget that more preferences than I'd like, have to be set on a per project basis. 

ampfixer
Thanks guys, All the references you make are making sense and I understand them. I'll go back in and reconfigure the preferences and see if it helps. I always forget that more preferences than I'd like, have to be set on a per project basis. 

If some of the stuff you need is indeed Per Project once you get it all working how you like might as well save a project template so you don't have to deal with the new fangled stuff anymore unless you want to.
 
Cheers.

I checked the preferences and found that they were as you have all suspected. I didn't realize comp mode would do so much to mess me up. I've tried to dumb it all down as much as possible and it seems to be helping. 
 
I really appreciate all your help guys. I'm not marking it solved yet because I want to do some more experimenting.