Drawing a Fishnet in Illustrator

Whether it forms part of a fishing device or a pair of stockings, a fishnet pattern consists of repeated diamond shapes formed by intertwined ropes, strings or threads. Drawing a fishnet manually or attempting to create it with a set of diagonal lines can be a time-consuming exercise, especially given the difficulty of deciphering the angle to which you must rotate intersecting sets of parallel strokes to form the grid you need. You can speed the process of building these kinds of repeating patterns in Adobe Illustrator through the program's shape-drawing tools and its keyboard commands for duplicating objects.

Press "Ctrl-F10" to open the Stroke panel. Set the weight to the default of 1 point, and then press "D" to set the Fill and Stroke colors to their respective defaults of white and black.

Press "M" to activate the Rectangle tool. Click on your artboard to open the Rectangle dialog box so you can enter dimensions and create a shape of a specific size.

Enter "12 pt" for the width and "24 pt" for the height of your rectangle. You can use other dimensions that maintain the same one-to-two ratio between width and height. Click the "OK" button to create your shape.

Open the "Object" menu, select the "Path" submenu, and then choose "Add Anchor Points." Illustrator adds a new anchor point exactly at the midpoint of each line segment of the rectangle.

Press the hyphen key on your keyboard to switch to the Delete Anchor Point tool, and then click on the anchor point at each of the four corners of the rectangle. Your rectangle turns into a diamond shape.

Open the "View" menu and verify that you're using the Smart Guides feature. If no check mark appears in front of the feature name, select it in the menu to activate it.

Press "V" to switch to the Selection tool. Press the "Alt" key, click and hold on the anchor point at the top of the diamond-shaped path, and then press the "Shift" key to constrain the movement of the shape as you drag downward to create a duplicate. Release your pointing device and keyboard keys as soon as you see the Smart Guides message "Intersect," indicating that you created a duplicate with a top anchor point that coincides with the bottom anchor point of the original shape. Press "Ctrl-D" repeatedly to continue creating aligned copies of the diamond shape.

Marquee around the column of diamond shapes to select all of them. Press the "Alt" key, click and hold on the anchor point at the left corner of the topmost diamond-shaped path, and then press the "Shift" key to constrain movement as you drag to the right to create a duplicate of the entire column of shapes. Release your pointing device and keys when you see the Smart Guides message "Intersect," indicating that you duplicated the selection with the left anchor points of the copies coinciding with the right anchor points of the originals. Press "Ctrl-D" repeatedly to continue creating aligned copies of the column of shapes.