In the small assembly of the attached image, the left half-shell is the symmetrical component of the right half-shell. It therefore takes all the configurations of the original sound. The interesting side is that by changing the configuration of the original part, the other one is updated automatically, but if by mistake it is the configuration of the symmetrical that we change, the original part does not follow and then, well it's not okay anymore.
The question is: Can we "disable" access to the symmetric component configurations? In its properties you can tell it to go back to the configuration of the original component, which "freezes" the list of configs, but does not prevent you from having access to its configs in the 3D view.
The principle of symmetrical components is to have the original component master in relation to the other on what is common. However, when you create symmetry, you have the option to break the link. This has the effect of generating the configs and functions of the original component but which no longer allows to have the associativity between the 2. You have to choose!
As an info, for my part, I put a particular color on the pilot parts by going through the construction tree of the assembly, to locate the part on which I need to change the config so that the others follow.
That's not quite what happens in my case. My original part contains configs. When I make it a symmetrical component, it also has the configs and these configs are accessible. I wish they weren't and that this part always remained the symmetry of the other no matter what, hence the idea of "deactivate/lock/erase..... " the configs of the symmetric component.
On the image I was able to modify the configuration of the symmetrical component, which should be impossible since it is the symmetry of the other. Result:-(