Rotary laser levels are made to layout grades in four different patterns or configurations.  The first obviously is to establish a flat plane over the earth’s surface.  Practically all rotary laser levels will help you set up grades in a flat, horizontal plane across a jobsite, or in the terms of interior lasers, across a room or building.

Single slope lasers, also called single grade lasers, will tilt on one axis to project a sloping plane.  An example of a sloped plane laid out on one axis would be for the construction of a continuous roadway grade, a tennis court or a vaulted ceiling in a room.

A dual slope laser, also called dual grade laser, will allow you to set grade along two axes.  A good example of this would be a parking lot that is graded in the X and Y axes to drain runoff to a catch basin in one of its corners.

The fourth type of layout pattern you find in rotary laser levels is a cone-shaped slope.  Cone lasers are essentially specialty lasers primarily used for sports fields.  Baseball fields for instance slope away from the pitcher's mound in all directions i.e. in a conical shape.  Agatec's CL185 Laser is a perfect example of a cone laser, which can be used for laying out a flat plane as well.

In addition to the above beam configurations is the way in which a level is designed in order for the user to engage its slope function feature.  There are primarily two ways that a single or dual grade level feature can be engaged and the first method is by doing "Grade Match."  Rotary levels that do grade matching, which are usually self-leveling or auto-leveling, must have the auto-leveling feature disabled before the grade matching feature is employed.  The level is manually tilted to the desired layout slope. As explained before, some lasers with grade match are single slope lasers and some are dual slope lasers.

The second method to engage a rotary laser's slope function is with "Grade Entry."  Grade entry allows the user to input the desired slope by punching the desired slope onto the laser's control panel or keypad.  Again, the auto-leveling feature will be rendered inoperative when this slope function is used.  This feature is a bell-and-whistle that will add to the cost of the laser, but it makes it very easy to use.