Multiple linescreens

FreeHand let you control halftone screens at the object level, by sending PostScript halftone code to imagesetters, during the bygone age when early imagesetters were very literal about halftone screens. If you entered 133 lpi at 45 degrees for a plate, that's what you got. But when the digital CMYK screens were overlaid, a common problem then were distracting moiré patterns. The moiré patterns were reduced by applying irrational screening, where imagesetters do not apply exactly the frequency and angle you specify, but other values calculated to get you the result you want with less visible moiré patterns. And they can also vary the shape and size of the cells to get there. But all of those adjustments meant you no longer had direct PostScript control over the halftone values that actually came out of the imagesetter. That was when halftone controls at the object level started to disappear, because then there was no point to it.

According to PrintWiki, where you can read about digital halftone screening in more detail, moiré patterns were finally eliminated through supercell screening. This gets even farther from how traditional halftone screening is done.

That’s why building halftone screen effects for design reasons is now done as a graphic pattern or plug-in type of effect, not by trying to directly address the imagesetter hardware like FreeHand did.

I used to do tech support for FreeHand, at Aldus.

You can't do that in Illustrator, the way that I do it is in photoshop, I screen the desire elements the way that I want and then place it again in AI for final output.

The settings depend on what exactly you want to do and the final workflow, What Rip, output Resolution, ETC

so if you can show your artwork and workflow maybe will be easier to show you a workaround

You can apply patterns. But maybe you are referring to just the output? Can you be a bit more preicse?