A method of conveying the designer's intended electrical characteristics for a semiconductor design is provided by forming tolerance bands for a design layer of interest that take into consideration constraints from design layers that interact with and influence the features on the design layer of interest. The method determines regions, i.e. tolerance bands, within which the printed edges of features of the layer of interest will print within a predetermined criterion, and satisfy a variety of constraints, including, but not limited to, electrical, overlay and manufacturability constraints arising from the influence of features on other layers. The method may be implemented in a computer program product for execution on a computer system. The resulting tolerance bands can be used to efficiently convey the designer's intent to a lithographer, an OPC engineer or a mask manufacturer or tool.