Raglandttiger

Well, I have had inconsistent results myself.  I have gone through and manually specified all walls in my model, so please just chalk this up to a user experience - I don't need fuirther help here.  Thanks.

If I set a wall segment with exterior specified as siding and then copy that wall segment and paste it, the pasted segment reverts to default exterior.

Great answer.  Not.  Many limitations?  This is simply bad programming - copy/paste that does not copy/paste is a pretty rudimentary failure in any piece of software.  

Done - Home Designer Suite 2018

I have tried to use the available resources but was unable to generate a userful hit.  I am familiar with earlier versions of the program.

Just downloaded version 2018.  When I create a wall and specify a non-default exterior and then copy/paste that wall, the exterior reverts to the default surface.  I also tried to change the default exterior surface in the Default settings menu but many options from the library (such as using exterrior siding) do not appear in the Default setting menu.  I am trying to have a light grey ship-lap exterior.