Yes, it's complicated. And the deeper you go the more complicated it gets.
But like they say, if it was easy everybody would be doing it!
I'd suggest kicking back with a beverage and watching some
videos.
Granted, most of the stuff in Cakewalk's YouTube collection is intermediate-level, and mostly X3-related, but a great deal of that information is still relevant to SONAR 5. Try
this one as a starting point.
Here's one about sends and busses.
There are videos about many basic functions, and even though most are demonstrated on more recent versions of SONAR, the basic layout hasn't changed so much that you won't be able figure out what's what. A track is still a track and a bus is still a bus, and other terminology is mostly the same too.