In the very best case, it is indeed easy! I've seen the entire process take less than a month for a completely novel structure - those were extremely lucky cas

In the very best case, it is indeed easy! I've seen the entire process take less than a month for a completely novel structure - those were extremely lucky cases of course, but my point is that it costs very little to set up some screens and see what happens. (Small globular proteins of course, not ribosomes or ion channels.)