Systems, methods, and computer program products for design rules checking in which the waiver of design rules is optimized while ensuring compliant designs that are manufacturable. A first design rule and a plurality of patterns of a layout that violate the first design rule are received by a design rule waiver system. The design rule waiver system may process the first design rule to extract a plurality of descriptors that can be perturbed. The design rule waiver system may perturb an attribute associated with at least one of the plurality of descriptors extracted from the first design rule in order to define a second design rule that is satisfied by the plurality of patterns.