Users commonly change a single characteristic on a number of components, especially those related to appearance, such as color and shine. Currently, as the user selects one component, then another, and so on, when each configuration dialog opens the default tab "General" is active. It would be much easier if, for example, the shine of the rocket is being changed from 0% to 50%, when the nosecone appearance tab is active and you move to the body tube that the configuration dialog opens to the appearance tab, as would transitions and fins, etc.

The trade off would be that you would have to select the "General" tab to get back to the basic data, but my experience is that doing so would be much less frequent than the clicks saved by going to the same tab between components.

New components would open the "general" tab, as would selecting a component that did not have the selected tab from the prior component.