Flattening An Object Hierarchy Using A Shim Class - Initializing Derived Object Properties From The Base Object?

I am somewhat new to object oriented programming and am attempting to flatten a Linq object hierarchy by using a shim class.how to initalize a derived class with property values from a base class?I have two objects, a base object with about 100 properties, and a derived object which inherits from the base object and adds a few additional properties beyond those of the base object. My simple constructor creates the derived object, but I am looking for a way to initialize the derived object properties with values from the base object.Right now I am using reflection to iterate over the properties individually and I suspect there may be a better way. The following example shows my shim class constructor for the derived class, and two properties:

newProperty1 - a new string property of the derived class

flattenedProperty2 - a new string property of the derived class, copied from a 2nd-level object of the base class

Code example:

Public Class derivedObj
Inherits baseObj
Private _newProperty1 As String[code].......

Is this the correct constructor approach to flatten the object hierarchy using a shim class? My second question relates to initialization of properties in the derived class. The constructor above creates the derived object, but what is the best way to initialize the derived object properties with values from the base object? The following code uses reflection to iterate over the properties individually, but I suspect there may be a better way.

Code example:

' property names are in the string array fieldNames

'baseObjQuery is an ienumerable of baseObj

'derivedObjList is a list of derivedObj[code].....

Is there a simple way to initialize values for the properties in the derived object based upon the values of the common properties in the base object?