I read your post and tried it, unfortunately because i had enabled 'ip routing' on the switch as per someone else's suggestion the result appeared unsuccessful. Having testing taking each bit out of the config and trying it, it seems ip routing had the affect of blocking the ping reply even with ip default-gateway inserted. It was not until mr.richardb pointed out the difference between the command to use for L3 and L2 that I knew to take it out again, at which point it started working.
So for me, this was the solution. I also have DGs setup on my L3 and was not familiar with SVIs. I have since researched them. This was another reason for me marking mr.richardb's post as the solution.
I thank you for your time and help with this problem...
However, as a 'beginner' Cisco Community member, remarks of 'wasting my time' (i see you have now edited your wording) is not going to help people like myself be confident in coming to ask for help. We are all here to learn from and help each other, which makes me wonder if you care more about helping someone to learn and improve their abilities, or being the person with the right answer.
I thank you again for your time and assistance.
