I think you need to understand the hierarchy of hardware and software here. National Instruments makes both data acquisition devices, like your USB 6211, and also a graphical programming language called LabVIEW, among other things. In the case of NI hardware, we provide drivers that allow the users to easily interface between our hardware and LabVIEW, as well as several other text-based languages. A large majority of the drivers for our hardware fall into a driver package that is called DAQmx. Having this system in place allows a very smooth experience when dealing with multiple types of our devices, as the coding from device to device essentially doesn't change. Consequently, we have very tight integration between our hardware, and our main programming language and environment, LabVIEW.
In terms of DAQmx, or any of our other driver packages, these will only support NI hardware. However, we still have many methods of integrating 3rd party devices with our software. In some cases vendors supply these drivers directly. In some cases other users or even National Instruments will develop LabVIEW drivers for these devices, and post them to our Instrument Driver Network. In the case that none of those options are available, we still provide tools and methods for you to communicate with your device as described in my previously posted documents. This can be performed through low level VISA commands. I'd recommend that you check out our NI-VISA Overview for more info on the topic.
Paul Davidson
National Instruments
Product Owner - ni.com Chat
