I read about being able to 'not' remove components from a ship when designing the update in the shipyard so I hunted for this option and deselected the remove components in my current game. When I then tried to update a design there were no components(functional or appearance) listed, most of the ship space was used (not all since I had gotten a miniaturization tech since initial design), and I could not remove anything.
I then reselected the remove components and all went back to normal.
Devast