Simple question: is there a simple (one click) way to remove all unused plugins (effects, instruments) from a project...? Like you can select and remove all unused colors in InDesign...?

I have no idea what InDesign is, but no.

the only way to remove unwanted plugins is to uninstall them (if they were originally installed) or delete the dll's which were put in the plugin directories.  then you'd want to do a rescan of all plugins in sonar.

OR

you can open the plugin manager and disable the ones you don't want to use any more.  they would still be installed or reside on your machine, but sonar would ignore them.

I was going to say what Beagle said but re-reading your post I believe your talking about removing Plug ins from a project not your system right?? And by plug ins are you talking about soft synths or efxs or both?

Cactus Music


I was going to say what Beagle said but re-reading your post I believe your talking about removing Plug ins from a project not your system right?? And by plug ins are you talking about soft synths or efxs or both?

Right! I am old enough to know how to uninstall plugins.  I was indeed talking about getting rid of unused plugins in a project.
 
The things is: I am editing various old projects and 1. I completely lost track of what I used in those projects, 2. I need to use new plugins because some old one don't work well or because I've got better plugins, and 3. I am also testing and trying new things in those projects... So a lot of the projects are a mess now with stuff in the synth rack that I don't even use and fx-plugins on tracks that aren't used either. Figuring out where those synths and plugins are is very cumbersome so I thought that maybe there was a simple way of getting rid of all the plugins in a project, soft synths and efxs, in an easy way...

sorry.

removing them from a project you just click on it in the FX bin and hit the delete key.  simples.

LOL You still don't understand the question.  Removing them isn't the problem LOL (that would be something after all these years): figuring out which effects and synths I can remove safely is.

Well if that was me I'd be tempted to open a new project and copy the tracks. That's a fresh start. Don't take long to make a new mess o things. 

And I still don't understand.  what do you mean by "remove safely"?  that doesn't make sense to me.

This is getting funny (and out of hand LOL). Imagine this: you have a huge projects and in that project you have added lots of effects that are NOT used anymore on any track and lots of soft synths that are NOT used anymore on any track. To prevent stuff from loading and cluttering up the project you would like to remove all unused effects and soft synths. But because you completely lost track of what's used and what's not, it would be very convenient if Sonar had an option that would scan the project for unused stuff and then remove it. And my question is: is there such an option? Apparently not...

Copying all the tracks to a new project: then you lose all connections to the soft synths, I guess? And will effects be copied too...?

Well, I think the only solution is to check each and every track for what it uses and what it is connected to and then manually remove unused items...
 
EDIT
P.S. Forgot to explain 'remove safely': InDesign is a lay out program, brother (sister?) of Photoshop and Illustrator. When I want to remove a color from the list of colors I get a warning if the color is used by an object: I can choose to cancel or to replace the color with another color. Now when I want to remove a soft synth from a Sonar project I don't get a warning like that: if a track is using the synth or not: you don't know... So if is not safe to simply delete a synth because it might be used and something may go wrong due to that. It would have been great already if Sonar would warn me if I want to delete a synth that's being used!

How do you define an "unused" effect?  If some effects are switched off in the FX bin, then Console View will show them all at a glance.  If some effects are within tracks that have no audio, then it is these tracks that need to be deleted, not just the effects.  Similarly, if these effects are within buses that no tracks are routed to, then it is these buses that need to be deleted.