I have watched mat farming video and can attest to the accuracy and efficiency of it. It entails a little bit of running around for the raws. I think I had to go 30-40 jumps to a few planets, but I maxed out all the G4's and used the mat trader to get the specifics I needed for what I wanted to do.

I didn't need much of the engineering mats, but I maxed out my Imperial Shielding (G5) in almost no time and it gave me enough trade value to get the rest.

EDEngineer is also a great tool to plan out any engineering you wish to do. It will look at your current stock and tell you what you need and what you can trade for. So if you get a ton of Imperial Shielding for example, using EDEngineer you might find you can trade your way to what you need. It's a little clunky and takes a bit of getting used to, but it's a go-to for me.

Throughout history, poverty is the normal condition of man. Advances which permit this norm to be exceeded — here and there, now and then — are the work of an extremely small minority, frequently despised, often condemned, and almost always opposed by all right-thinking people. Whenever this tiny minority is kept from creating, or (as sometimes happens) is driven out of a society, the people then slip back into abject poverty.
This is known as "bad luck.”
-Robert Heinlein