We use "wire grill" material often for the guards on the machines we manufacture.  Sometimes the guards are flat, other times they need to be bent.  Attached is a picture of the grill material, as well as a 3D model of a guard I am working on.  With patterns like this, I usually pattern the body, since this tends to considerably less time to rebuild than a feature pattern.  Since this guard is bent, I have to combine the bodies, so I can use the sheet metal features to bend it.  This takes a long time to rebuild.

Does anyone have recommendations on a better way to model parts like this?