An improved three-dimensional quantitative spectral data-activity relationship (3D-QSDAR) methodology was used to build and validate models relating the activity of 130 estrogen receptor binders to specific structural features. In 3D-QSDAR, each compound is represented by a unique fingerprint constructed from (13)C chemical shift pairs and associated interatomic distances. Grids of different granularity can be used to partition the abstract fingerprint space into congruent "bins" for which the optimal size was previously unexplored. For this purpose, the endocrine disruptor knowledge base data were used to generate 50 3D-QSDAR models with bins ranging in size from 2 ppm × 2 ppm × 0.5 Å to 20 ppm × 20 ppm × 2.5 Å, each of which was validated using 100 training/test set partitions. Best average predictivity in terms of R(2)test was achieved at 10 ppm ×10 ppm × Z Å (Z = 0.5, ..., 2.5 Å). It was hypothesized that this optimum depends on the chemical shifts' estimation error (±4.13 ppm) and the precision of the calculated interatomic distances. The highest ranked bins from partial least-squares weights were found to be associated with structural features known to be essential for binding to the estrogen receptor.