Thanks James.  For incremental updates to existing environments, I could see how the System Default Settings with the Production Export functionality would work well.  For now, our product is still in development and test phase, we don't have anything out in the real world yet.  I am still not sure - for creating that initial install package for when we take this live, whether it is better to use the Production Export Functionality or create a custom install class.  Besides system default settings, we have OIDs, LOINC codes, document info types, Registry configuration, Custom XML summaries and more.  Right now the custom setup class creates those when the setup class is run in a new environment, and I am adding more to it based on recent development changes.  I believe if I used the export functionality those settings would end up in the deployable file, but I need to get an empty environment up and running so I can test that.  We are at version 2017.1.3, so not sure if we need to wait until 2017.2.0?

Take care,

Grace