I see. So you can use the Presets in their ‘default’ form, of you can extract the samples to use them in isolation (or to re-combine with something else).
Yeah, Halion lends itself extremely well to ‘swapping’. You have a program list, a program tree. and program slots. Without getting into that, you have these hierarchical containers where you can expose a patch’s contents and extract what you want into your ‘working’ patch. I’d almost suggest that it is The point of Halion 5!
So the Presets you get with H5 are NOT duplicates of the other HALion libraries ??
Ah I gotcha. Yeah they actually are dups. Check this out. http://www.steinberg.net/en/products/vst/halion_and_halion_sonic/line_up.htmlI guess you do get 300 special patches! But going back to the ‘swap’ workflow, and looking at 2800 patches, you kinda see what you’re working with. Hey I’m new to this too, so I’m also wrapping my head around how to use this. There are some users here who get VERY deep, I’m envious 
I have always played LIVE in bands (unless I am backing a show in which playing along to a ‘click track accomp.’) most of my life though recently I ran a Duo in which we used MP3 backing tracks (and I muted the main keyboard parts which I played myself on my Nord and Roland JV1080). What I would really like is to learn about how to understand and create ‘Electronic’ music (like DANCE etc). Lots of people (I read in forums) seem to use ABLETON rather than Cubase, or sometimes in conjunction with via REWIRE. There is a college in my nearest city (Liverpool) called SAE and it runs a 6 x month course dedication to the letter mentioned. It is 2 x evenings per week (3 x hours each) costing around £2,000.
There is so much information these days, some forums are very good. I don’t post at them, but occasionally look thru Reaper forums and KVR, the people there are kind and share tons, I mean they drop college courses in some threads, if you look hard enough. I also like Groove 3, $15 per month gets you all access, the information you can get there is astonishing. I like to get an hour a night in, and I read everything whether it’s relevant to my setup or not.
Simple, quick and easy is a method I will be preferring at my elementary stage.
You’ll be fine! Simple, quick and easy is how I prefer to do things at every stage, keeps it fun! 