Assura DRC not recognising pins

 Hi,

In Virtuoso Layout (L or XL) I can place a label on my design using the appropriate layer (for example I can put a label of layer "PIN" purpose "metal1" over a part of a net which is layer "Met1" purpose "drawing") and assura DRC will recognise this as a pin. However, if I use Create -> Pin, this creates a square (which I set to be of the appropriate pin layer), optionally with a label associated with it. If I place this square over the same place, it is not recognised by DRC as a pin. It would be very convenient if I could get these symbolic pins recognised as pins because then Layout XL will generate them for me automatically.

Here are the appropriate layer definition lines from my drc.rul file:

;; >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
;; text layer
;;
   POLY1_pintext = textToPin( "PIN"  type( "poly1"))
   MET1_pintext = textToPin( "PIN"  type( "metal1"))
   MET2_pintext = textToPin( "PIN"  type( "metal2"))
   MET3_pintext = textToPin( "PIN"  type( "metal3"))
   MET4_pintext = textToPin( "PIN"  type( "metal4"))
   PAD_pintext = textToPin( "PIN" type( "pad"))
;;
;; symbolic pins for macro LVS and RCX
;;
   POLY1_sympin = pinLayer( "PIN" type( "poly1"))
   MET1_sympin = pinLayer( "PIN" type( "metal1"))
   MET2_sympin = pinLayer( "PIN" type( "metal2"))
   MET3_sympin = pinLayer( "PIN" type( "metal3"))
   MET4_sympin = pinLayer( "PIN" type( "metal4")) 

;; >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
;; pinPurpose layer (only drc)
;;
   POLY1_pinPurpose = layer( "PIN" type( "poly1"))
   MET1_pinPurpose = layer( "PIN" type( "metal1"))
   MET2_pinPurpose = layer( "PIN" type( "metal2"))
   MET3_pinPurpose = layer( "PIN" type( "metal3"))
   MET4_pinPurpose = layer( "PIN" type( "metal4"))
   PAD_pinPurpose = layer( "PIN" type( "pad")) 

I guess that only the first set, the "_pintext" variables are being interpretted as pins. If so, I guess there are two possible solutions - one would be to change the rule file to also recognise the squares as pins; the other to somehow get the labels associated with the symbolic pins recognised as text labels.

Regarding the first option, I tried changing the "textToPin" function to the "layer" function but this actually caused a segmentation fault in assura drc.

Regarding the second option, it's not clear to me what the relationship is between the symbolic pin and its associated label, and why those labels are not recognised by assura? If I could copy those labels to make them independent of the symbolic pins I'd have a reasonably simple solution but I don't seem to be able to do this? I guessed that the relationship between the pin and its label was a paren/child relationship so I tried using edt -> advanced -> attach/detach to detach the label from the pin. After this the label didn't move when the pin moved (unlike before) but nevertheless (a) when I delete the pin the label is also deleted, and (b) I cannot copy the label.

 Any advice would be gratefully appreciated.

Thanks

Sim Bamford