Sadly I am spoiled for choice.. I have Session Drummer, Addictive Drums, Maschine and Battery.
 
For the last few years I have used Maschine for drum pattern programming, however I am checking out using Battery 4 with Sonar step sequencer and so have a couple of questions..
 
I see that SD will auto populate the drum sample names into the SS, yet Battery (and AD) will not., so..
 
a) Is there any way to auto populate the note names box in the SS with the drum sample names from Battery (like as happens with the SD kits)?
 
b) if not, assuming I manually enter them, what is the process for saving this for future use.. a user kit in battery? (not needed unless I create a custom kit no?)..  or save as a pattern in the SS with the Battery kit name?..
 
c) If I do the above.. how do i get the parts to auto load like SD , or are we fated to manually load a SS pattern for each kit we manually setup?..
 
d) Any other tips/techniques to share?
 
cheers

For SONAR to automatically populate the note names in the step sequencer the synth vendor needs to implement the VST 2.1 opcode effGetMidiKeyName. Cakewalk does in Session Drummer, FXpansion does in BFD, unfortunately NI and XLN do not.
 
Drum maps will also populate the note names in the step sequencer.

Another option, if you tend to follow the same note assigning convention most of the time is to create a track template with the notes assigned and named. Takes under ten minutes and only needs to be done once.

Hmm
 
never used drum maps before, so went off looking.. and it appears that there is a huge populated list of drum maps for Battery.
 
 
so,  in the battery midi source track i set output to drum map, picked a kit, loaded said kit into battery and the step sequencer is populated correctly.. (for sure dubd, i would need to streamline the several octaves of hits..lol).
 
The drum map midi routing however was wrong it had picked a random external midi port.. so had to go to the drum map manager to pick battery as the midi destination.. 
 
progress...