Assuming VS2012 as I can't rememeber what 2010 supported:
You can either set up a solution via the GUI and add projects to it and then set up dependencies via Right Click Solution -> choose "Project Dependencies..." and setup your dependencies. MSBuild can build sln files just fine.
Alternatively (and what we do) is manually edit the vcxproj files to specify their dependencies via project references in an item group. This means you don't need sln files, and just building any project will automatically build its references projects if necessary.
<ProjectReference Include="PathTo.vcxproj">
<Project>GuidOfProject</Project>
<Name>Name</Name>
<ReferenceOutputAssembly>false</ReferenceOutputAssembly>
<LinkLibraryDependencies>false</LinkLibraryDependencies>
<UseLibraryDependencyImports>false</UseLibraryDependencyImports>
</ProjectReference>
from your description, you'll probably want to set LinkLibraryDependencies to true, but you'll want to investigate those options...