brconflict
My point is this: What does the phrase Entire Mix mean to you? And when you want a mix-down, what would you typically expect that to do for you?
 
Not discounting the statement bitflipper appropriately made and others agree, this is some seriously low-hanging fruit to address. Would anyone disagree that moving the "Select" export function to As Selected and leave Entire Mix for the entire mix only is an ok idea? How do other DAW's do this?

I agree that the mix/export options can be improved to be more intuitive. There is a lot of power there but it can be confusing for some users. There should be a more explicit choice for exporting the entire project, which then ignores any prior selection made. There are future plans to improve the export/mix workflow. Its not scheduled yet but it will happen at some point.

Noel Borthwick [Cakewalk]
There are future plans to improve the export/mix workflow.

Hopefully it will at least remain the same as it is at the moment. I never use select... Always export the entire mix with nothing selected. To change this behaviour will confuse old, long standing, brain cell challenged users like myself...

I think the idea is that a default option would be to ignore any selection and just export "what you hear" so nothing would change for you. I would welcome this too and am glad to hear it's at least in the pantry, if not the oven.

synkrotron

Noel Borthwick [Cakewalk]
There are future plans to improve the export/mix workflow.

Hopefully it will at least remain the same as it is at the moment. I never use select... Always export the entire mix with nothing selected. To change this behaviour will confuse old, long standing, brain cell challenged users like myself...

True, if anything isn't selected, you already get the entire mix. For me, it's very easy to select something without knowing it. There's many ways this can happen. But even then, and to update my response more clearly, If you select a track and export Entire Mix, you don't get the Entire mix. As Selected would have made more sense for exporting only what's selected.

A problem I get is without anything selected, it says nothing is selected so cannot export au naturalle.
 
So select what I can dragging a region line along the top and couple bars more to allow effects to ring out. However sometimes this selects a random track and only renders that. It becomes obvious when the console meters are not animating.
 
So I normally just render the required bus tracks I need to ensure I have the correct audio.

interpolated
A problem I get is without anything selected, it says nothing is selected so cannot export au naturalle.
 
So select what I can dragging a region line along the top and couple bars more to allow effects to ring out. However sometimes this selects a random track and only renders that. It becomes obvious when the console meters are not animating.
 
So I normally just render the required bus tracks I need to ensure I have the correct audio.

This is an issue where something was selected (where might be a mystery), and there was no audio in the window of that selection. I've had that happen quite a bit as well.

This happens for instance if your selection is in the bus pane.

Once you know learn how to do it (or anything in SONAR or any other DAW), you just do it going forward.  We don't need options for everything possible one can or needs to do. There's a learning curve for everything so you learn.  Like someone said, just add it to your workflow.   You'll forget sometimes... so just do it again...

This suggestion would make things simpler in most cases, not more complex. I can see a use for the way Sonar's export options work but nine times out of ten they get in the way because you just want a "what I hear".

It's really simple, if clicking PLAY plays THE ENTIRE MIX regardless of what is selected or which track is in focus, then exporting the entire mix, especially when the hardware outputs are selected, should output the entire mix as heard. If there is an "as selected" option, that should be mutually exclusive with "entire mix".
 
I do not use the bus outputs because I dislike that it appends the bus name to the file.