Hello algae592009,
I understand that all this must be very confusing to someone who is new to the VSL, so let me explain a bit:
As far as I understand you own the “Solo Strings I” library, which is a Vienna Instruments library. These are, as the name suggests, sample “libraries”, i.e all the different playing techniques are stored on your hard disk, but they are this way not directly accessible by Dorico. To be able to play them and make them accessible to Dorico they must be loaded into VSL’s sample player. There are two versions: the free “Vienna Instruments” and “Vienna Instruments pro”, sold separately. Only the latter allows to directly access a substantial part of a library and it has many other advantages. All the sounds that are loaded into Vienna Instruments pro can be stored and recalled as a “preset”. The VSL provides only basic presets for the different instruments that include a (small) part of the articulations included in their vast libraries (e.g. Solo Strings I).
In order to access a given instrument Dorico needs an “Expression Map”. The VSL has not released a Dorico Expression Map for the Solo Strings I library (or other Vienna Instruments libraries), but it might be that some user has created a free Expression Map that allows to access part of its content in Dorico.
This thread is about the “Articulate Map”, which is a sophisticated Dorico Expression Map, based on “Articulate Presets”. These commercial Vienna Instruments pro presets are available for most Vienna Instruments libraries (including Solo Strings I) and provide access to their complete content. They are fully consistent across all the covered instruments and libraries and offer many other advantages, in particular their “3D-control” that allows you to continuously control various musical parameters (e.g. attack, vibrato, …) to shape the playback in detail. The Articulate Map in turn allows Dorico to access the entire content of supported VSL libraries in order to play back your scores. In addition to the fully automatic playback it likewise gives you the chance to control it in detail in case you choose to do so.
The Articulate Presets packages come with “Playback Templates”. These are very convenient since they set up everything for all included instruments so that Dorico can access the entire content of a given VSL library. I.e. you can simply select the corresponding Playback Template, e.g. for Solo Strings, in Dorico’s preferences, and from that point on all your scores will use the VSL to play back solo string parts. The Articulate Presets packages also include a complete integration into Logic.
Finally the VSL Vienna Instruments libraries themselves come in two versions: standard and full, which differ in the amount of included articulations and the quality of these sounds. There are separate Articulate Presets packages for these different versions.
As far as the Vienna Smart orchestra is concerned I am not sure if there is already an Expression Map (or even a Playback Template), but you could check this thread: Expression Maps for Dorico 3.5+
All the best
Kai