AutoCAD Inventor :: Best Practice Parameter Storage

I am starting a VB.net project, and I want to get off on the right foot. The code I am working on first will need to examine an existing part's parameters and check that the correct ones exist, and if not, create them and give them an initial value. This is a fail-safe against somebody opening a global parameters part and deleting or renaming a parameter.

My question is: what is the best way to store this master list of parameters in the VB code? Would storing them as an Enumerator in their own Class be the best route?  I am pretty new to VB, and I dont want to go way down the wrong road.

Just for clarification, the part that holds the parameters is derived into many other parts, and is linked to many assemblies to provide global parameters and sketch blocks throughout a group of models.

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