That could get expensive if you had multiple machines. The negative for UCCNC is they give you the software free but charge for the controller and a licensing fee for each controller. GARBL has been having issues with off brand controller cards that don't work like expected, it's Arduino based and apparently all Arduinos aren't created equally. I'm putting together a small cnc router and decided to go with UCCNC. In the DIY market GARBL (there's a perpetual debate as to if that's pronounced gerble or garble) and UCCNC are pretty popular. They have kept Mach3 on the market for hobby users. Mach 3 is actually outdated and they sell mach 4. Then you need the machine control software, that is what Mach3 is. Freemill and Tinkercadd are a couple free ones. Of course as is typical with free software it can be buggy and is typically pretty limited. There are free CAM programs that will do it as well, but most are what is called 2.5D which is what is typically done on a 3 axis mill. Fusion 360 has a really high level cam system built into it. For instance Dolphin does the cadd and the cam portions, it's also pretty simple to use for a 3 axis system. There are a lot of programs that do this, many are parts of other programs. It takes the drawing and converts it to G Code. 3D cad has a pretty steep learning curve.
You can get Fusion 360 from autodesk for 1 year free as a hobbiest then the subscription is $495 a year I think, though it usually goes on sale at least once a year for about $300. Solidworks starts at about $3500 and goes up fast depending on the version you buy. There are also others like I believe Vectric Aspire but I don't know much about them. That would be something like Solidworks or Fusion 360. If you're going to try and do something like carving decorations then you need a 3D drawing program. Particularly if they aren't multi thousand dollar software packages. A lot of the cam packages have at least some cadd capability but they are often pretty limited. Basically something that will create the original drawing and make a file such as a dxf the cam software can understand. Depending on what you're trying to make that could be 2D like Autocad, Actcad, Dolphin or Turbocad, or a bunch of others. I say kind of because there are packages that contain one two or all three parts. You kind of need 3 pieces of software to make a part with cnc. Mach 3 is $175 now and it just does the machine control part of the system. The easier the software is the more it costs generally speaking. This is far from a comprehensive list I don't even mention Rhino, bobcadd and a bunch of the other high end packages.
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