Control Software Vs Control Hardware

Hi All,

I am very new to this exiting world of CNC machines and is determined to create something good from it.

I have a question on Control Software Vs Control Hardware. I am setting the context before jumping to actual questions:

My Understanding:
1. CAD: Designing in computer. Input is Mind, Output is a Design File e.g. dxf, etc
2. CAM: Converts the design in machine code and the
industry standard is G-Code. Thus input is design File, output is
G-Code (or some other code)
3. Control Software: A software that converts the Machine Language/Code
into the actual signals that your control hardware would understand.
e.g. EMC2, Mach, etc.
From a software perspective, this control
software is a device driver. EMC2, Mach3 acts as the control
software/device driver where in you configure the properties of device
which is your control hardware.
4. Control Hardware: The hardware that understands the input singnals from Computer ('s parallel port/serial port, etc) and gives the instruction to actual machine to process.
5. The Actual Machine

My confusion is between Control Software and Control Hardware. I have read somewhere that
there are Hardware Controllers that directly read the GCode. These
electronic controllers take input from Parallel port and process based on the input GCode.

My questions:

1. Is my understanding of Control Software and Control Hardware correct?
2. If there are Hardwares that can understand GCode, and software too which process GCode to machine signals(EMC2, Mach3, etc), then what is the industry standard.
3. If both are possible, can you please suggest/refer to link which can guide me which approach to use?

Thanks in advance.

Regards
Sandeep Jindal




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