Roughly described, while manually dragging shapes during IC layout editing, editing operations determine which edges of which shapes are moving at what speed ratios. Based on the edge information and the DRC rules, the system calculates and keeps track of the minimum of the maximum distance the edges are allowed to move with the cursor without violating DRC rules, in four linear directions and all corner directions. Once a next cursor destination point is known, a DRC clean destination point is calculated based on the linear and corner bounds. If the next cursor position is beyond a the push-through distance ahead of the new DRC clean point, the editing objects are moved to the user's destination point. Otherwise, the editing objects are moved to the new DRC clean destination point, thereby stopping movement at that point.