Assigning a Net to an Unassigned Shape

I am using Allegro PCB Editor 16.2.

I have a symbol (dra file) that has 8 top-layer shapes in it.  These shapes are not connected to eachother.  Within each shape, I placed a pin which I would like to be electrically connected to its respective net and the shape to be connected to the pin's net (in this case all are connected to ground).  I get a DRC error regarding spacing between the pin and the shape on the same layer in the symbol file.  I assume I'm not assigning something properly.

If I put this symbol into my design (albeit with the symbol's DRC errors), the pins connect to their assigned nets just fine, but all 8 shapes are assigned to a "dummy net" and are not electrically connected to their pins or ground.  They, of course, have the same DRC error as in the symbol file. 

If I choose Display-->Status, and click on the box next to "Unassigned Shaps" I can get a "Shape Without Nets" report and it tells me how to suprpres these messages in this report for a particular shape, but these are problems in my design and I would like to fix them rather than suppress them.

I would like to know how to do the following:

1.  Properly connect the pin to the shape in the symbol, so that there are no DRCs in the symbol or brd fiile and the shapes are connected to the proper pin and net.

and

2.  Once in the brd file, I would like to be able to reassign the "dummy net" shape to the ground net, i.e. choose the shape and assign it to a net.  If I accomplish #1, I shouldn't need #2, but knowing how to do #2 would come in handy as I've ran across this issue while doing other things in layout.

 --Mark

If I choose Display-->Status I see that I have 8 Unassigned Shapes.  If I click on the yellow box next to it, I get a "Shapes Without Nets" report.