Filter CPT's by Multiple Categories in Front End

Hi all,

I’m trying to create something similar to the admin section where you can choose your categories, hit the filter button and see the results, but in the front end.

I don’t know whether it would be better to do this through custom taxonomy (Create a custom category for things like gender, height etc for e.g.) Or to do it through custom meta boxes and create a kind of query builder?

Has anybody done anything like this before or know of any plugins?

Thanks
Dan