I am trying to make a drum beat and I want to split different drum parts into multiple tracks.

For example, I want my snare, kick, and hi-hats in separate tracks so that I can put reverb, compressor and different sorts of effects on different parts.

Are there easier ways than loading a VSTi into all of those multiple tracks?
It seems very unnecessary to load 4 of the same VSTi.

I've also tried to create multiple midi tracks and set those midi tracks' outputs into a VSTi.
It seemed to be working just fine for a while until I figured that the plugins for the soft synth and the midi tracks are different.
(Sonar didn't let me put reverb or compressor into midi tracks. Instead, it showed all sorts of midi plugins such as arpeggiator, quantize and such.)

Does anyone know how to get this done? I just want to put a compression on my snare. Not to the whole drum set!

Depends on the softsynth you are using. Most drum synths have the ability to assign instruments to different audio tracks. The easiest way is to make sure the "All Synth Audio Outputs: Stereo" or "All Synth Audio Outputs: Mono" is checked when inserting the synth. Then do whatever the synth needs to map the audio to the tracks.

Wahey! Something I may be able to help with, providing you're using BFD? Are you using BFD? 

I mainly use battery3 with samples!

Ah, never used Battery to be honest. However, if I explain the way I program BFD, it may be transferable. If not, sorry I don't have a clue 


Within Battery, in the mixer screen, set each drum to a different output (BFD output 1 is always  master, so I set snare to output 2, kick to output 3, hi hat to output 4 etc.)


Within Sonar I then create 1 MIDI track, input from controller, output to soft synth. I'll then create the number of audio tracks that are required (one for each drum).


Output is set to my MIDI interface, input is selected to each drum. So first audio will be BFD 2 (which is snare), next audio to BFD 3 (which is kick) etc.

Well, that's the BFD anyway. All about the mixer within the soft synth

kineticfs, like scook said, you can start by choosing Midi Source and All Synth Outputs (Mono or Stereo) when you insert Battery. That will insert the main midi track you'll record to plus either 32 audio tracks (mono) or 16 audio tracks (stereo). Next load your kit into Battery. Make sure the Cell tab is open on the bottom of the Battery interface. Click a cell, then go to the Output section of the cell tab (far right), click on the channel drop-down of the Output section, and choose an available output. Click another cell, repeat previous steps, etc., until you've assigned all the cells you want to a channel. Now when you record and playback your Battery midi track in Sonar, you'll see each cell outputting to its assigned audio track.

Once you get it all setup, you might want to select all the tracks associated with Battery and the Drum Bus (you are using a Drum Bus right) and save it as a track template. That way you can reuse the track template rather than setup Battery each time.

Some great advice so far.

When you've finished mapping all of your kit pieces form Battery into Sonar, delete the unused tracks to reduce screen clutter.

I would also make sure you select Mono tracks only when you insert Battery as a synth, this weill make mixing a lot more simple & strsightforward.

scook is spot on - put all your drum tracks into a drum folder.

Create a stereo bus (because you do want to pan you kit right?) and route the output of this bus to you Master Bus
route the outputs of all your drum audio tracks (not the Midi track) to the drum bus

Setting up multi outs in Battery is a piece of cake, however I seem to remember having trouble with using mono outputs so I just used the stereo ones instead. If you need more outputs than are in the Battery output drop-down menu, then go into the Battery options (wrench icon) and tell it to give you more. 

Oh and by the way, did you try Battery's "in house" processing? You can add compression, saturation, reverb and delay to each drum individually. Just click on the drum in question and go to the "effect" tab. I sometimes find everything I need out of these effects anyway, no need to make multiple tracks in Sonar. The compression is perfectly adequate for snares. The delay effect is pretty cool to play with too.