Struct initialization in C #?

Some code I'm changing makes extensive use of structs to communicate with some factory hardware, loading them into or out of byte arrays.

Here is a simplified example of such a structure.

[StructLayout(LayoutKind.Sequential, Pack = 1)]
public struct K_FOO
{
    public byte a_byte;    // 1 byte
    public BYTE3_TYPE b3;  // 3 bytes
    public int num;        // happens to be 4 bytes
}

      

        
        
        
      

    

BYTE3_TYPE looks like this:

[StructLayout(LayoutKind.Sequential, Pack = 1)]
public class BYTE3_TYPE
{
    [System.Runtime.InteropServices.MarshalAs(UnmanagedType.ByValArray, SizeConst = 3)]
    public byte[] L = new byte[3];
}

      

        
        
        
      

    

If I just do

    K_FOO origFoo = new K_FOO();

      

        
        
        
      

    

int and byte are initialized to 0, I assume they are native types, but byte array b3 is * un * initialized - all null values. I have to explicitly load it, for example

    BYTE3_TYPE b3 = new BYTE3_TYPE();
    origFoo.b3 = b3;

      

        
        
        
      

    

... and I couldn't think of any alternative, because structs don't take parameterless constructors, but real structs are huge.

But I noticed something interesting. We have procedures for copying these structures to and from byte arrays. For example.,

   public static T ByteArrayToStructure<T>(byte[] buffer) where T : struct
    {
        int length = buffer.Length;
        IntPtr ptr = Marshal.AllocHGlobal(length);   // allocate (length) bytes
        Marshal.Copy(buffer, 0, ptr, length);  // copies into UNmanaged space
        T result = (T)Marshal.PtrToStructure(ptr, typeof(T));
        Marshal.FreeHGlobal(ptr);
        return result;
    }

      

        
        
        
      

    

... and if I name it ...

    K_FOO retFoo = ByteArrayToStructure<K_FOO>(buffer.bytes);

      

        
        
        
      

    

... the resulting structure is returned fully initialized, the bytes in the byte array have all space allocated so that they can be loaded, presumably in a call to PtrToStructure (). This means that .Net "knows" how to initialize such a structure. So is there some way to get .Net to do this for me so I can avoid writing hundreds of lines of explicit initialization code? Thanks in advance!