A method is presented for the approximation of any real, symmetrical, nonseparable array design response polynomial of order

-by-

for rectangular arrays with

by

uniformly spaced elements (

). Previously a sampling method has been used to exactly synthesize response functions of a single variable by

element line arrays [1] and nonseparable functions of two variables by

(square) arrays. The sampling method is extended herein to apply to rectangular arrays by deriving the element weights for an

by

rectangular array that exactly yield the values of any desired real symmetrical array response function on an

by

grid of the interelement phase shifts. This would yield the designed array response exactly everywhere if the design equation were of order

with respect to one dimension and of order

with respect to the other dimension. To approximate this condition, the original design function of order

in both dimensions is modified to make it of order

in one dimension and of order

along a single grid line in the other dimension. (A second function is derived with these roles reversed.) The resulting function has the form of the original design function, exactly equaling it along the

grid lines of

points each and along the single perpendicular chosen grid line of

points, and closely approximating it throughout the entire range of the variables. This technique is illustrated for Chebyshev response functions, for which the two approximating functions are derived and evaluated for several combinations of

and

. The responses are shown to have generally uniform sidelobe regions, with all but a small percentage of the sidelobes within 1 dB of the designed sidelobe value.