Rhodes Chroma Polaris

> ... is the sysex file on the site sent from your
> sequencer to tell the polaris to open each sound
>  into the workspace and then transmit, in order?...

The .syx files that on the site are just intended for the Computer -> 
Polaris direction.  E.g., if sent from the Computer, a full block of 132 
programs will go into the Polaris.

That said, if you did want to request the dump from the Computer - then 
you'd need to use SYSEX to do that.  You can have the computer (via 
SYSEX) ask the Polaris to get patch data.  The computer will need to 
receive the SYSEX response from the Polaris, and save it.  It would need 
to do this 132 times, for the 132 patches.

The commands available are outlined in the MIDI Manual 
(http://www.rhodeschroma.com/content/polaris/midimanual.pdf)

As has been noted by others - in some cases it may be just as easy to 
use existing interfaces that will do this for you.

Another low-tech approach is to dump all the patches via the tape 
interface.  You can record this as a .wav on the computer.