How to create perfect halftones in illustrator

I have illustrator and I know how to create halftones in illustrator but is there anyway to make perfectly round halftones or even a way to make your whole design halftones easily. The way I am doing it now is.

1st: Create a gradient from black to white
2nd: Go to effect / pixelate / color halftone
3rd: Set everything to zero besides the top number "you'll have to play around with the setting to see how big of circles that you would want".
4th: embed the image
5th: image trace it and then expand it.

Then I just select all the white and group it and hide it.

But after I do all that the halftones can be odd shaped. And that is a process to do on just one color. Is there any better ways of doing this.

Edited by Squewheet, 14 July 2012 - 02:55 AM.

You can use effects transform and hit random box. play with those settings until satisfied
Duplicate using either
Object Transform or Effect Transform and set on angle usually centered on withe space between circles.
After that is set then grab both and duplicate horizontal ......... until you have the preferred size pattern

Or you could do a blend draw 2 circles one smaller than the other and spread them the distance of your clipping.
Play with blend settings to get desired results and then select make blend. Repeat steps above as mentioned in the effect transform section. One good thing about blend is that you can take that blend and set it to another spine.

Hope this is of help Good Luck

If you want the easy route ..
You can search the web for a plug in Phantasm CS plugin made by Astute.

It maybe available as a dl but I am not sure what is the price.