setup project (vdproj) and Visual Studio build step vs. command line

We have a legacy solution with 2 fairly complex setup projects (vdproj).  Reading on the .net the recommend seems to be to convert to WIX but I hate to fix something that's not broken.

I am trying to get a formal build going on our build machine again. We used to do it under CruiseControl but that config has been lost to the sands of time.

Lots of noise on the 'net and here about this scenario but I don't see a clear solution.  The setup gets built just fine on the build machine when I run the solution in a copy of the VS2013 UI.  But running the build step "Visual Studio (.sln)" builds everything but the installer and just quietly seems to skip that project.

What is the difference between doing a "Rebuild All" in VS UI and running the build step "Visual Studio (.sln)"?

Our of all the noise is there an accepted way to build setup (vdproj) files?  I get that they're not supported at all under MSBuild and the best thing I've seen seems to be to invoke the individual project from command line devenv but I would like to understand why that's different from the TeamCity invocation.

Thanks,

confundido