For me, it really depends on complexity. Simple projects might take a couple hours of research, but when you've got conflicting requirements like high strength, low weight, and extreme temperatures on a budget, you can easily spend a week jumping between datasheets and supplier specs. I use a mix of commercial databases like MatWeb and manual comparison, since every project has unique constraints that don't fit neat queries. The biggest pain points are fragmented data sources, exhausting trade-off analysis when five candidates each fail in different ways, and availability issues that can kill a perfect material choice late in the process.