I have been playing with auto panners trying to get a string pad and a guitar power chord - both of which have a deep square tremolo - to swim from left to right/right to left (mirror image).  I can draw envelopes, I can apply Pan Man, but it would be cool to have a LFO that could be routed to the pan pots to do this internal to SPLAT.  
 
I seem to have read that Bitwig (???) or some other DAW recently (?) added this to its arsenal.  
 
My wants:
A per track available LFO that can 
Be assigned to whatever track parameter you want (I want pan)
That can be asynchronous or synchronous to MIDI
That can be switched off and on somehow once it is enabled (so the panning goes around in the chorus but not the verse...)
 
I know I can do it with plugins, but with track automation, an LFO to drive the automated parameter seems like it would get used occasionally.
 
Thoughts?

You're probably aware of the "sine" and "triangle" drawing tools? Tbh I don't see a great use for this within Sonar's workflow.

Or rather, one per track seems pretty limited in that case. Now if you could add LFOs at will, globally or per track, that would be interesting. Perhaps a "controller rack" (perhaps also physics based controllers) similar to the synth rack would work. And then be able to select them as input for automation lanes, with a "strength/intensity" parameter. That way you could add for instance a regular slow rise via drawn envelope, and then modulate it by 10 percent with an LFO.

space_cowboy
My wants:
A per track available LFO that can 
Be assigned to whatever track parameter you want (I want pan)
That can be asynchronous or synchronous to MIDI
That can be switched off and on somehow once it is enabled (so the panning goes around in the chorus but not the verse...)

There already is an LFO tool...to elaborate on what Sanderxpander said, check out the waveform options in the automation Draw tool. What you can do with them is more flexible, useful, and customizable than what you could do with an LFO.

That's not an LFO tool (and is just about useless in practice as drawing doesn't actually work very well).

KPerry
That's not an LFO tool (and is just about useless in practice as drawing doesn't actually work very well).

Well...an LFO is a low-frequency oscillator, and you can generate low-frequency oscillations, so I wouldn't know what to call it other than an LFO tool.
 
Here panning alternates between +50 and -50 every measure, while volume is "sawtoothing" from full on to -12 dB every quarter note:
 

 
I certainly don't have any problems getting periodic waveform automation to do what I want it to do. I especially like that you can ramp the LFO depth up and down while drawing, and vary depth for selected parts after-the-fact. Even more, I like that it's easy to draw one cycle of whatever kind of crazy LFO waveform I want, copy it, and Paste Special to create as many cycles as needed. I don't know of any standard "LFO" that can do that, unless it incorporates user-definable tools similar to what SONAR has.
 
Maybe I should do a tutorial about how to get the most out of the Draw tool periodic waveforms if people are having a hard time with it.
 
The only limitations that bug me are:

• Not being able to slew the random waveform ( I think a lag processor for automation would be more useful than having an LFO on each channel for panning)
• Not being able to draw periodic waveforms in the PRV.
• Not being able to have frequencies greater than whole notes.

 
However for the last item, there's a super-simple workaround. Maybe it would make a good Friday's Tip of the Week.

There are two free autopanners with tremendous flexibility in both waveforms and synchronization: PanCake and MAutoPan. MAutoPanMB lets you pan multiple frequency bands independently, and is currently on sale for $23.

The OP said he knew it could be done with plug-ins, but he wanted something inside SONAR. But I'd get the free plug-in just for the ability to smooth the random waveform. That would solve not being able to lag the automation waveforms in SONAR.
 
I do like being able to vary depth dynamically in SONAR while drawing. It looks like with the plug-ins you'd need another automation curve to control depth. Also I can't tell from the description for the free one whether it's possible to offset the waveform so it's not around 0, or so you can "bottom out" or "top out" the waveform. I assume that would be handled by choosing a static pan setting for the track and having the plug-in modulate that.

I've never been able to get that drawing tool to work and actually generate a smooth curve, so I draw by hand.  And it would be *much* quicker to be able to drop in a plug-in, or similar, select a waveform and period and fire away.  Not to mention if I decide I want to change things (waveform shape, period, amplitude) rather than having to re-draw (and you'd have more accuracy too).

K Perry you seem to get my point. I have never been good at drawing a straight line with a ruler, much less something on the pc.  
 
Bitflipper, I have both the Melda Creative FX and the Soundtoys 5 plugs.  I know you can do this with other tools, it just adds a few more steps than my solution.  
 
Besides synchronized panning, you could do (1) Filter changes (2) VST parameter changes (3) channel related (like PAN) changes....Just something in the Pro Channel that could be routed to anywhere on a track.
 
Bitpig (or one of the other new up and comers) is doing it - or so I read in one of my rags I read.  

KPerry
I've never been able to get that drawing tool to work and actually generate a smooth curve, so I draw by hand.  And it would be *much* quicker to be able to drop in a plug-in, or similar, select a waveform and period and fire away.  Not to mention if I decide I want to change things (waveform shape, period, amplitude) rather than having to re-draw (and you'd have more accuracy too).

I get what you're saying, but the OP said "I know I can do it with plugins, but with track automation, an LFO to drive the automated parameter seems like it would get used occasionally." So I came up with a way to do LFO waveforms using track automation. 
 
In practical applications, most synths have automatable panning so nothing is needed within SONAR for that. That leaves controlling parameters like pan as part of SONAR's mixing, like the OP referenced. There are advantages to using plug-ins but there are advantages to using the Draw tool.
 
I don't understand why you don't obtain the kind of even waveforms shown in my screen shot, but that's probably a separate issue. The OP now has an option that is not dependent on the Bakers adding a built-in LFO that I venture to say not that many people would use, so it would be prioritized fairly low on the to-do list - especially because soft synths have panners, there are plug-ins, and SONAR has sophisticated ways to generate, control, and vary the depth of periodic LFO waveforms. 
 
I'm an "and" kind of guy, I like to know all the possibilities and choose the one that works best in a given context. Hopefully among all the options that have been mentioned, the OP can obtain the desired musical results.