Update - ALL IS WELL. The CD arrived today. I logged in with a machine administrator account and installed 11.5.1b off the CD. Then I launched the software one time, and quit.
Then I opened Terminal, and did the following:
sudo su
chmod -R 777 /Applications/VectorWorks\ 11.5.1
then I did
cp /Users/theadminaccount/Library/Preferences/thevectorworksPrefsFile /Users/thenonprivilegedaccount/Library/Preferences/samefilename
Then logged in as the nonprivileged account, ran VectorWorks, had to re-enter the serial number, and it saw the network dongle and ran just fine.
All this on OS X 10.4.3.
Thanks,
Case closed,
Eric