SolidWorks assemblies and components

AFAIK you could change the Read Only attribute of a component from Windows Explorer, and thus keep people from Opening a particular subassembly for editing, but preventing someone from changing the configuration (via Properties) of a subassembly is not possible. In doing the latter you are changing the top level assembly (which I must presume can be opened for editing in your query), NOT the subassembly. That is to say you're changing the Properties of your subassembly IN your upper level assembly. That's not the same thing as changing the subassembly itself.

'Sporky'

Thanks Sporky I reloaded the subassy as read only and tried to change a part comp of the subassy; I got a warning that I was changing a read only 'document'. pdmw is good for controling read only status...

I need an API that will take a list of selected components inside a window; parse out the parts inside subassys and select the subassys. I would then have a list of top level components. I could do this in the feature manager, but window selection is so much faster. API D