Not sure - where do I find that?
 

The plug-in layouts selection is at the top of the plug-in menus.

If I'm looking in the right place, on the upper right it says Plug-in Menu Layout, and just below that is a pull down menu. It is blank, and if I pull down the menu there is only one choice, "X3 Producer Effects."

Wrong place. That is in the Plug-in Manager and is used to create layouts but it does sound like there are no custom layouts other than the one supplied with X3 Producer available. Just to make sure, each menu which inserts plug-ins has an option to set the layout manager. For example, in the browser, it is the down arrow on the Plugin tab with the Instruments button selected and in the Synth tab under + > Insert Synth.

Sorry. There are two items checked, DEFAULT ALL PLUG-INS and SORT VST3 PLUG-INS BY CATEGORY.

Yeah - that's a weird one.  I have never had that sort of an issue with NI components, and have had NI since Komplete 3 up to Komplete 8 (didn't buy 9).
 
Bob Bone
 

guyprentice
Sorry. There are two items checked, DEFAULT ALL PLUG-INS and SORT VST3 PLUG-INS BY CATEGORY.

This makes sense.
 
So from what I can tell:
The plug-in list was correct in X3d Producer 64bit on this machine
 
The only changes to the machine since a correct plug-in list was the X3e update,  reset and rescan of the VST plug-ins
 
Now the NI synth plug-ins are nowhere to be found in the Plug-in Manager but appear in the DirectX section of the Default All Plug-ins layout in the browser. All the other synth plug-ins before and after the NI VST plug-ins appear correctly.
 
Yes, his is a puzzle worth a call to tech support.

Appreciate your efforts!! I'll give tech a call in the morning.

Try moving the NI sub folder to the Cakewalk/VSTplugins folder under C:/Cakewalk/VSTplugins.

I want to thank those that took the time to respond. While the troubleshooting didn't provide a solution, it sure saved a lot of time on the phone with tech support this morning, because you had eliminated a lot of possibilities. It may have just been some sort of glitch in SONAR, but I reinstalled it and the VSTs are being recognized like they should. If I was really brave, I'd reload the "E" update and see what happens, but "D" is very stable in my system, so I'll leave it alone for the time being.
 
Thanks again for the help!